Confessions

What is I going to write today may surprise some people.  If you have just known me in the last 20 years, maybe there will be no surprise.  For the people who have known me most of my life, some of you may be surprised, shocked or disappointed.  No apologies from me on that.  This is me.  xx

Today while browsing Facebook, I noticed some stunning photos.  They are of a lovely young lady I met through my son.  She is pregnant and due to give birth any day now.  The photos are a gorgeous celebration of her relationship, her pregnancy and the new life she is about to bring into the world.

It started me thinking how wonderful it is that these days all babies are welcomed as a joyful addition to the world.  Barely anyone cares whether the parents are engaged, married, single.  We have gay and lesbian couples with precious little ones added to their relationships.  We have pregnant brides, brides with the kids as attendants and it is ALL fantastic. 

It has changed so much from when I was younger.

When I was 17 years old I came out of a long-term (one year is long term at that age!!) relationship and fell deeply in love with my previous boyfriend's best friend (complicated I know!).  My parents took one look at the new guy and decided they hated him, so of course I loved him even more!

My parent's went away on a cruise and left us in the care of my aging Grandmother.  Well let's just say that nature (and teenage hormones) took their course and Jen became a 'woman'.    I was blissfully happy but feeling a bit unwell.   Eventually my mother noticed some changes in my shape and questioned me.  Before that I don't actually remember acknowledging I might be pregnant, but of course, I was. 

My mother immediately told my father, whose reaction was to slap my face and tell me I was a 'f...king slut'.  I don't think he looked directly at me for many weeks after that.  The next thing I knew I was at the family doctor who gave me my first internal examination.  He was not gentle, and when I winced, his reply was 'can't be any worse than what you did to get into this mess'!!!!

Appointments were made by the doctor and my parents, and a few days later I was driven to East Melbourne to a well known abortion clinic.  There had been absolutely NO discussions with my parents about what was going to happen.  They made the decision and that was that. 

On arrival at the clinic, I remember bursting into tears.  My mother turned around and said, 'go inside and get this over with'.  When I protested I was told that I either had the abortion or I would be left on the street and would not be welcome back in my home.  I want to say here that my parents were good people.  They probably thought they were doing the right thing.  My mother was very conscious of her social position and was not going to be embarrassed by this sort of accident.  To my shame, I went in and had the abortion.

On arriving home I was told that this would never be spoken about again, I was not to tell anyone, especially the father of the child (with whom I was still in a relationship).  I did tell him the next day.  He was understandably angry, hurt and disappointed.  He immediately suggested that if he had known, we could have been married and raised the baby.  I was unbelievable heartbroken.  My parents never knew I told him.   My parents banned him frym our house and after meeting at the shops etc, the relationship finished a few months later.

True to their word, the baby, the pregnancy and the whole incident was never spoken about again until 1978 (when I was 24). 

I eventually married someone else.  I wanted a family straight away but my ex insisted we wait for 12 months.  After our first anniversary we started trying, and eventually  in late 1977, I was pregnant.  I was totally ecstatic.  At about 12  weeks things started to go wrong and I lost my baby at 16 weeks.  The night before I had surgery, I rang my mother sobbing and said 'God has taken this baby as a punishment for my other baby'.  I was told to stop being so silly and she hung up.  I never tried to talk about my baby to her again.

Fast forward to 1989 and LOML and I were a couple again.  We talked about anything and everything.  At one stage, the subject of the relationship with his best friend came up.  I confessed about the baby and abortion.  Bless him, he held me while I cried for hours.  He let me talk about my baby, my loss and my anger.  I realised my long-established deep depression, stemmed from the forced abortion and my guilt at not protecting my precious baby.

I have had extensive counselling and help to come to grips with what I did.  Despite realising I did my best at the time, I doubt I will ever stop blaming myself for the loss of life.  I will never, ever forget my first two babies that never made it into this world.

If you have made it to the end, thanks for reading.  Please try not to judge me to harshly.  

Love and celebrate every life that comes into this wild, wacky, wonderful world xxxx

Buy A Life

I like to play games on my laptop and ipad.    I do a lot of this.  Often at times when I should be sleeping, doing housework or other more productive things.

For a while there I was, like lots of other people, almost addicted to Candy Crush.  I just HAD to play it and it felt like a huge achievement when I completed a level.  However I absolutely refused to spend money on extras for on-line games.  It got to a point where I could not complete a certain level and I lost interest.

However, it did get me thinking.

How great would it be, if life was like Candy Crush!!

Let's face it, the end is inevitable.  As someone once said, the only certain things in life are death and taxes!!   So how cool would it be if, when reaching that point, we could just 'buy another life'.

Now obviously this extra life is not going to keep you going forever.  But it could buy you time to complete things before you depart permanently.

So how would I use my extra life?  

I would want to finish any books I was half-way through, complete
any knitting and cross-stitch pieces I have going.  Hopefully I would have some time to write a note to some special people.  The other thing I would absolutely do, is tidy all my cupboards and drawers.  Now they are usually pretty neat, but I would hate for anyone to have to sort through a mess!!

So how would you use an 'extra' life?

I would love to know!!

My Summer Blergh

So summer is officially here.

I apologise to all summer lovers, but I do not enjoy this season for several reasons, which will become apparent as we go along.

We were out yesterday, in the heat, and it struck me that the first really warm day we have each summer reminds me of going into labour.  No really it does!!

You see, when you have your first child you enter labour in blissful ignorance.  Sure you know it's going to hurt, you are going to lose all dignity and occasionally wish you were dead, but you have no real idea of what contractions feel like.     Then you have your second child and as the first contractions grips your belly it all comes back to you.  I remember saying 'now I remember how much this hurts'.  By then, of course, it is way to late to do anything about it, you just suffer through.

Well folks, the first hot day each year is just like that.  The sun hits, burns the ground, your skin and everything else and suddenly you think 'now I remember how much I hate this'.   It's too late ... summer is here.

So what exactly do I dislike about summer.   Well, firstly there is the sun (fairly obvious you may say).  The sun is extremely bright and hard to escape.  In the sun, I squint.  Even wearing a hat and sunglasses, I squint and squinting causes wrinkles!  Do remember here, I have just turned 60 and need absolutely no further assistance developing wrinkles!

In summer, I sweat!!  I do not like to sweat.  If I wanted to sweat, I would exercise on a regular basis.  I clearly do not do this!  I spend time doing my hair and (minimal) makeup each morning.  When I sweat my head and face get very wet, destroying the effect.  Sweating is unladylike and yucky.

Also getting cool is much harder than getting warm.  You can always put on an extra layer of clothing, wrap a blanket around yourself or sit near the heater or fire.  But in summer there are only a certain amount of clothes you can remove before the police are called.   I do not want to be responsible for affecting the mental status of small children.   
Similarly, summer clothes are often short and sleeveless.  Neither of these options are good for me.  Really, we are all better off if I keep things well covered.

Next problem.  I love comfort food, soups, dumplings, warm puddings.  These do not mix well with hot weather.   Barbeque and salads are great, but I do not want to eat salads every night of the week!!   If I did I would visit one of those fancy 'health' farms!

Yes, I am biased against poor summer for many reasons.   The good news is I acclimatise fairly easily and do enjoy those gorgeous balmy summer nights.  So it's not all bad.

So welcome summer .... be short and sweet and I guess I will see you next year.

The wonders (and horrors) of TV

I love television.   It is a big part of my life and I watch lots of it (some people would say I watch too much).   It is a very powerful medium.

Until now I have been watching on a 30 year old tv with a 16" screen.  Even if you only know metrics, you will know that this is a very small, very old tv.  We bought a digital set top box and were quite happy to continue with that until the poor old tv eventually went to electronic heaven.

BUT .... For my recent birthday I was given an amazing new large flat screen television and something called a BeyonWiz.  This magic black box enables me to record anything I want, so I can watch it at my leisure.  I can also watch shows on a ten minute delay, so I can fast forward through the ads (!!).  I can stop a show, rewind .... believe me, this little box changes the way you watch tv.  The gift also included my very clever brother coming to install the new system.

I have been having so much fun with it. 

It has however, made me think about what we see and hear on tv and I am becoming increasingly curious about how and why television presenters are chosen.

Now I understand tv is a visual medium and these people need to look presentable, but these people do not just stand there .... they speak.  And some of them speak really badly!

There have long been comments, and jokes,  about football commentators being unable to correctly pronounce the names of teams.  Two perfect examples are
Carlton being called 'Caaaarton' and my pet peeve, Essendon becoming 'Essedon'.  Carlton contains the letter 'L' and Essendon, the letter 'N'.  Why on earth won't people use these perfectly good letters?

Poor Jo Frost (England's Super Nanny) has so much trouble with words.  Screw comes out as 'schcrew', lives becomes 'lifes' and so many more.

Now I notice Michelle Bridges is flogging her program and telling us how 'impordant' it is.   Really Michelle .... would that be important???

Another one of my current peeves is 'our' pronounced as 'are'.   This one is very common on radio too.

When I was training as a teacher, there was a fellow trainee who constantly pronounced specific as 'pacific' and maths as 'maffs'.  Maybe these presenters were taught by teachers like this.   Where does this start (and end)?

I could go on and on, but you probably have the idea.

Now I am not holding myself up as perfection with pronunciation, but I am not on public media.  

There are so many people out there who would kill to be a television  presenter.  Do we really have to have people flooding our screens, who struggle with basic words???

Retail Rip-Offs

I do not enjoy shopping.

Okay this is not entirely true.  I quite like shopping online.

Shopping online is perfect because I can spend money while sitting in my favourite chair, in my favourite room while watching my favourite TV show. Also everything is delivered to you.  What could be better?

Actual shopping in a store is horrible.  You have to trawl through the racks to find the right item in the correct size.  Inevitably, the size you want, is the very size that is not longer there.  Or the colour or style.

If you are lucky enough to find what you want, there are dressing rooms to tackle, crowds to manoeuvre around and the long wait at the checkout.

Today, with LOML (Love of my Life) in tow, I went to a very well known variety store.  This store advertises widely that you 'get more. pay less'.  I'm sure you know who it is.

Arriving at the store today there were signs everywhere saying '$10 off ... when you spend $60 or more on clothing, sleepwear, underwear, footwear and accessories for the whole family'.

Cool, I thought.  I was there to buy footwear and clothing and $10 off is always welcome.

We spent far more than the required $60 and expected to see the $10 off at checkout ..... but NO!!

First condition was (in the smallest print possible) that the discount was not applicable to the 'essentials' line.  Okay.  Still expecting the $10 off, we were told that the other $150 worth of shoes and clothing we had chosen already had discount applied to them and therefore were not eligible for more discount.

When I questioned where this discount was marked on the tags or docket, I was told that the discount was 'built into' the price.   WTF!

No amount of talking could convince the store representatives that this was ridiculous.   We left, with our shopping, but no discount.

Be very wary folks.  Stores can put up all the signs they like about discount, but when it comes to applying this at checkout time, they have ways and means to avoid giving you any discount at all.

Manners

Many things have changed since I was young, but none more than the etiquette of invitations and replies.

If we received an invitation to an  event, we replied.  We replied as soon as we possibly could.  We checked our calendars and commitments and then either said we would be there or not.

When the date arrived, we turned up (more or less on time) and usually had a great time.

I have discovered that these days, when an invitation is received there are apparently some new options.

Thankfully, some people stick to the old rules.  They check, they reply, they attend and they hopefully have a great time.

Others choose the newer options.  They either do not reply at all or they reply, accept and then do not bother to turn up to the event.

What is this?

It is a reasonable expectation to attend an event and find food and drinks available and yet people do not seem to take into account the work and expense this catering incurs.   If you are hosting an event, you want all your guests to have the best time possible.  That includes ensuring no-one goes home hungry or thirsty.  This is hard to do if you have no idea of numbers.
Conversely, over catering wastes time and money. Both scenarios are frustrating.

I know times change.  Invitations have become less formal but surely some common courtesies could continue.  Even if only for the practical reasons of planning.