Every evening, at about 10pm, there is a scuffle, thump, thump, thump, scuffle, scuffle, on the roof. A possum, making its way from the back yard to the front.

I no longer curse it.

Stef asked for food pron, and who am I to refuse? The Misses Six recently became the Misses Seven, and we celebrated with a party at home for about 12 very excited six, seven and eight year olds. Miss Nine, and one of her friends, bless them, ran games - Pass the Parcel, Musical Statues, a treasure hunt, all the usual party palaver, but with one or two extras thrown in, such as chalk drawing on the pavers outside - while I got the food organised.

The first course was the usual - sausage rolls, cocktail sausages, chippies (crisps), fairy bread, and to assuage my food pyramid guilt, small ham and egg club sandwiches, made with wholemeal bread. The children, as usual, devoured the sausage rolls, cocktail sausages, chippies and fairy bread, all with lashings of tomato sauce (ketchup), and ignored the healthy sammies, except for one lad who thought they were wonderful and ate about six.

For dessert, I made tiny meringues, traffic light jellies, and my favourite fruit and lolly kebabs, marshmallows and mini chocolate fish in between chunks of fruit. Sadly, I can’t get chocolate fish here in Adelaide, so I had to make do with fruit jubes. However they were very well received all the same, by the children, and by Mr Strange Land, when he got the left-overs that evening.

And the cakes, which I think of as the cakes that taste forgot. But the girls liked them, and in reality, they tasted delicious. They both wanted chocolate cakes, again, so I used my utterly reliable yoghurt chocolate cake recipe.

People who have been reading my blog since the start may have recognised the food. It’s virtually the same as the food I served this time last year, at the girls’ request. It seems to be a very successful formula - the children go away happy, and on not too much of a sugar high. As long as the girls keep asking for it, I will keep on making the same food for their parties every year.

Cross posted on In a Strange Land

Mostly I have tried to ignore World Youth Day, vaguely thinking that if I clap my hands over my ears and my ears, then I will hear no evil, see no evil and do no evil. The good people at Larvatus Prodeo have been doing a jolly fine job of analysing World Youth Day anyway, which is a good thing, because you certainly won’t get any analysis from the sycophants at the Sydney Morning Herald. It hasn’t occurred to them to ask difficult questions when people say things like this?

Sister Catherina, a nun from Tonga who was seated well back in the throng, said: “We see Jesus when we see the Pope.” [link]

There’s simple faith, and then there’s sheer idiocy.

Tigtog Hoyden has a lovely take on Benedict’s alleged charm and other failings.

As for what I think about it all, well… take a look at this.

The Pope, in a specially embellished WYD08 gown, was flanked by 420 bishops and 26 cardinals in the sanctuary of the altar, while 3000 priests were seated at the front of the sanctuary. [link]

The mind-blowing, obvious problem with this picture?

Not only are the “most important” people wearing silly hats, but absolutely every single one of the people who get to be right up front, marked out as special and important, somehow closer to holiness than anyone else, is male.

Apparently the sex trade is doing great business in Sydney with all the Catholic pilgrims in town.

H/T: Wallaby

Cross posted on The Hand Mirror

In industrial societies, we have come to define work as something which is usually done outside the home, and in exchange for payment. That people should ‘go out’ to work is taken for granted, and a woman is described as ‘leaving work’ when she withdraws from paid employment in order to have a baby. Yet most of the activities that are carried on in the home would meet the criteria that are used to distinguish work from leisure or pleasure. Cooking, washing, tidying up, taking care of small children - these are all activities which feel like work, and they are as essential to a society’s well-being as that work which is done on farms, in factories or offices. Despite this, housework is not a ‘job’ for most who do it. It does not ahve an eight-hour day, overtime rates, paid holidays or sickness entitlements. Women cannot usually retire from it and, in any case, find themselves without superannuation. Housework is work done for no pay at all, and htose who do it are classified as economically inactive - as ‘dependants’.

Belinda Probert, “Women’s working lives”, in Contemporary Australian Feminism, 2nd ed., Longman, Melbourne: 1997

Cross posted on The Hand Mirror

In the past few days I have been thinking about the women in my family, I suppose because I am mourning the passing of my aunty. Then Melissa asked this question on Shakesville (my favourite off-shore feminist blog, as in off-shore from both New Zealand and Australia).

What lullabies did your parents or guardians sing to you, and, if there are children in your life, what do you sing to them?

There’s a lovely Irish lullaby that I sing to my daughters, Too-ra-loo-ra. The version that I sing bears a passing resemblance to the official version, but only a passing one. My version is soft and gentle, a quiet repetition of syllables to soothe the girls to sleep. I have sung it to them more-or-less since the day my eldest daughter was born. My mother heard me singing it, and was surprised and delighted. It turns out that the version I sing was the one that she sang to us, and I didn’t even know it. As for Mum - she learned it from her mother, who sang her to sleep with it.

A few years ago, we were looking after my then nearly-two year old nephew for the night. As it turned out, my mother was staying too. I got the little lad ready for bed, and then called my girls to come and say goodnight to him. They all trooped in, and then without prompting, started singing the same lovely little lullaby to him.

When we went back into the family room, I found my mother sitting there with tears of delight and happiness in her eyes, that four generations later, her granddaughters were singing her mother’s song.

Starting Tuesday. On a part time basis. For six weeks. Being a policy wonk.

Will we cope?

One year blogging.

Tangible

320 posts.

1450 comments (merc was FIRST).

3247 spam comments deleted.

About 60,000 people dropping in.

One fantastic on-going on-line conversation with like-minded women - Julie, thank you so much for inviting me to join The Hand Mirror.

Two carnivals hosted - the 54th Carnival of Feminists and the second Down Under Feminists Carnival.

Several off-blog conversations with interesting people - you know who you are - ideas exchanged, support given, support received, in good days and bad. Thank you to my e-friends.

About ten posts included in carnivals of feminists and atheists.

Biggest day ever - 805 views, thanks to DPF mentioning my chocolate frog post on Kiwiblog. What does that say about the power of Kiwiblog?

The next biggest day - about 700 views, thanks to Larvatus Prodeo linking to my Anzac Day post.

Most popular post - the best playground in the world - about 2,400 views to date. I think it must come up in people’s search terms.

Most mysterious incoming link - to a post on the costs of parenting. Somewhere, on some forum for people who are both atheists and child-free, around the middle of June this year, people were talking about what I had written, or so said the ‘incoming links’ and ‘referring sites’ in my stats counter. But I could not see what was being said about what I had written.

Intangible

Connection with family and friends back home.

Participation in a wonderful project with wonderful women at The Hand Mirror.

A growing sense of community with like-minded women and men here in Australia and back in New Zealand, with people whose spirits speak to mine.

Starting to find my own voice.

My aunty has died. She was someone I loved and admired. She reared 11 children, and very sadly, buried two of them as adults. Most of her children have children of their own, and some of them have children now. So my aunty lived to see grandchildren and great grandchildren. She loved them all, and in the midst of all the childrearing, found time to love her sisters’ and brothers’ children too. She worked hard, all her life, initially teaching, then rearing her children, and helping her husband to run a busy farm. After her children had left home, she was able to travel a little, and to walk the length of New Zealand, literally. In very recent years, she had found some time and space to at last break free a little. She had started to take University of the Third Age courses, together with my mother. My aunty chose an art history course, and my mother chose a geology course, and they both went to both courses together, and enjoyed them so much. She had a lovely speaking voice, warm and welcoming.

My mother tells me that she died a good death, her family gathered around her, her daughters nursing her, and although the final end came faster than anyone expected, there was time for resolution, and a quiet, peaceful, competent death, as competent as the life she had lived.

I think my daughters are wonderful. Even if I try to set aside my parental partiality, I still think they are great kids, spirited but well behaved, polite, kind to each other and to other children, engaged with the world, and rather beautiful.

Seriously, they are very beautiful, and when the three of them are together, the effect is, I think, stunning. I get random compliments from strangers about them. They’re common enough that I have had to develop a standard response - a big smile, and “Thank you. I’m very proud of them.”

So when an elderly lady tapped me on the arm in the supermarket the other day, I turned to her with a smile. And she said, “What a shame they didn’t give you one boy among that lot.”

WTF!

In front of my girls, too. They were bewildered, and really a little upset about it.

Despite wanting to say something very rude in response, I simply replied, “Oh! I’m very happy with my lovely girls,” and left it at that. Later on, over lunch, the girls talked about it. I tried to explain that it was quite an old fashioned idea, that probably it was based in the idea that sons were important because they inherited the property / carried on the family name / would earn an income so could support elderly parents / whatever. And yes, I loved them all dearly and couldn’t do without them, and that of course, if I had sons I would have loved them dearly too. They were, I think, reassured.

But I’m still astonished by the sentiment, and by the fact that someone would say something like that to me, and that they would say it in front of my daughters for good measure.