New Addition

The last hope dog.
The last dog of my life.
I have never declared this before so I know it is true.
By the time she is dead I will be an aged pensioner and glad of the space.

So welcome Abbie Noiraude S*****

She is a Spoodle and proud of it.

She is a dog.
She is not a human and never will be and will not be treated as such.
I am reading as much as I can ( for free) the Dog Whisperers site. All my other dogs were ratty. I usually got them when they were older so had no input into their training.

I hope I get this one right.

Miss all my blogger friends, but the world is a better place since Rudd and Obama have been elected.

Australia is doing well on the world economic stage, but we have a way to go on Afghanistan and asylum seekers.
There is one word I have for asylum seekers and that is;
"Welcome".

If it had not been for Bush's knee jerk reaction ( by a jerk) we in Australia would not be having this debate yet again!!

So here's to us and here's to you and here's to Abbie!

PAX

Congratulations to the dear Mr President, Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
What a wonderful surprise!
Well done and we all cheered here when we heard of your prize.

We believe in you and don't be hurried into making any decisions especially when it comes to sending more young people into war.
Take your time.
Be considered and intelligent.
We know YOU CAN.


AND

What the heck are you doing smashing ( aka bombing ) the moon NASA?
Stop it!

AND

If I came to your country, America, and criticised your 'foolin' around', would you not scream "Freedom Of Speech"?
I have fought for the dismantling and deletion of all forms of racism in my country and around the world. I have stood up and been counted. I wrote to newspapers, spoke out in gatherings and marched in the steets to stop racism.

Our little bit of nonsense on local free-to-air telly last Saturday night was in no way intended to be racist but a bit of fluff and bubble that meant nothing.

I am as sensitive as they come on these issues.

I shall never buy nor listen to Harry Connick jnr ever again. I know he has helped fight the racism in HIS country, but he was a guest here and he was given his right to say what he wanted, but now he should move on and bugger off.

There!

What on Earth is your Problem?????

Dear America,

What is your problem?
What on earth is wrong with a socialised medical cover??
Are you so mean that you don't want to help the poor get the same cover as the rich? What! Do the rich deserve better medical help and support?

What is your problem?

Why are you so afraid of socialised anything?

You fought fascism, not socialism. You have always been 'onside' with socialised countries.
What is your problem?

You think you can set people apart because of their circumstances in life?
You think the poor and disabled should wait and rely on the 'kindness of strangers' never knowing when they are going to 'come through' for them?

And what is your problem?

Wise up, educate yourselves to what is happening in the rest of the world.
May I point to France, Sweden, Denmark, Britain and Australia?
We have 'socialised' medicine so that the decree of true democracy can be followed up with real action.

What is your problem?

Get real, get your head out of your rich buttocks and wise up, guyyyyssss!!!

Move on!
Be TRUE bloody Christians if that is what you constantly say you are and...

SOCIALISE!!

Daughter at work

Click on the title!

Watch for the long blonde hair.
This is what she loves.
This is who she is.
I love her for it.

My amazing daughter;
Writer, director, artistic director, producer, and all rounder...anything to do with theatre.

This is my beloved daughter in whom I am well pleased.

Jam tarts for tea

Another year!
Sigh!
Busy with ancestry stuff and tracing lines of family back to their origins.
Sigh!
In recognition of my ancestors I am lucky to have survived to this day, 19 September.
Sigh!
So many gone before, and before this age.
Sigh!
I am emptying of anger and filling with grief.

Another birthday.
Another bright spring day when thoughts fly back to my father saying every year...
"Ah spring, the time when life is renewed and my youngest daughter was born".

You miss your parents and the idea of a 'birthday' means so little without them here.

I miss my children and they are so far, always so far, if not in kilometres in connections. They are truly independent.

But:
For four years both birthdays and Christmas' I have been asking for two gifts. One is mulch for the garden so I don't have to do so much weeding. The other is for a new pair of secetures for these arthritic hands.
I got 'em both!
I am delighted!
No little Princess here, requiring restaurants, diamonds, boats, holidays or travel.
Just 'dirt' ( as my youngest calls it) and an implement for snipping trees.

Me me me. Today is allowed to be about me.
But I am finding so little to say.

The rhyme goes;

It is my birthday today
Jam tarts for tea
Yum yum pigs bum
You can't come.

Another from the vaults.

My poor mum.
My dear mum.
My loving mum.
I came unbidden. I was an oops baby. Not planned, not desired. I think she wanted a boy. He said he didn't mind if it was a red head girl. I was neither. And there's the oops once again.
It does affect you.

So here I am.
Fifty six if you want to know.
I am now an 'elder' of my tribe.
I am equal to the male members because I am no longer fertile.
I am here.

And here I will stay until another day.

Cheers!!!

Something Happens

The gum tree near my great great grandparents graves. She was the daughter of a convict. Shamed and moved and impregnated early. She was 'adopted' and cast away from her kin into this desolate landscape that I finally visited this month ( August). She gave birth to my great grandfather and married a man who accepted her and him. I was moved to rub my hands over their names...so far from the rest of their folk.
And a lone daughter lays at rest, not beside her own husband but beside her parents. He is buried up the road with the rest of the catholics.


Something happens when a woman turns fifty.
There is a cosmic shift that she has somehow learnt not to declare. To recognise it for its significance is to be labeled by those near as being somehow in 'The Change' and therefore 'unreliable' in her thought processes.

Something happens in the heart as well as the body. A recognition of time, ticking through the veins of memory, hope and loss.

Something happens and she turns bewildered to her sisters who, like after childbirth, cast downward eyes and perpetuate the myth of calmness, matter-of-fact-ness, a silenced lie of the pain and sudden immensity of the task and the affects.

Something happens when her hands thin and the arteries slow and her mind wanders to her youth and hope and joy. She becomes one with the universe ( as in birthing) and she clamps her mouth shut in case the yell of life leaves her in tears, trembling and mightily torn (as in childbirth).

Something happens to the woman as she realises she gave her youth, her body, her time, her energies, her laughter, her sparkle to those around her who took and took and took and left the shell she finds when she glances, passing, in the mirror.


And in the morning of the 17 day away I awoke to the mist on the Murrumbidgee River at a little town not far from the infamous Gundagai.




Something happens to the past as it whizzes by the head and spins you out of control, but yet you stay in control lest they say 'those things' they say about women turning fifty.

And when you touch the stone at the head of a woman scorned, hard working, censured, mystical, you think how wonderous it is to turn fifty ( six).

Something happens to us as we recognise the movement of time and life and death. We cry more, we feel more, we care more. We get grumpy, angry, fed up, tired, and decide (finally) not to suffer fools any more.

Something happens to our men folk. Their lives seem weaker, their love stronger, their bodies softer, their minds less hurried. They cry more, touch more, care more, are less angry, fed up, tired and they decide it is ok to suffer fools as they have not had to too often in their lives, being white men of reason.

Something happens when finally we let go of all that has gone before, but before we do we women have to worry and wonder and work our way toward ourselves, our true selves.

And something happens when the passing of a few minutes means as much as the passing of dear friends and family.


Vale Alan. You were a good man, to my recalictrant brother, my neices and nephew's pa, my parents mate, and my first dentist.
Thank you. On this day of your internment when I could not be there. I wanted to be, but it was so so far away. I hold you close. In memory of a man who tried to make a difference in the Australian community. Thank you.

Life

Thanks to Bloggio Oddio.