A practical philosophy

I always think it’s funny the little things my mind holds on to. Sometimes I struggle to remember what I said, or did, even a week ago but then there are things, often quite incidental things, that I can still clearly recall ten years on. One random tidbit that falls into the latter category is a theory I remember hearing about at uni. For reasons that baffle me I have always remembered one chap’s philosophy on the law. I’m hazy on the whom and the when and whether anyone else agreed but I know that one prominent philosopher concluded that the difference between anarchy and civilisation is the rule of law. Now to be perfectly honest, since the time I learned of that theory, roughly a decade ago, I haven’t had the cause or inclination to give it any further thought. That is, until Friday a few weeks ago.

You see on that particular Friday I was reminded of it as I undertook a little philosophising of my own. My conclusion is slightly different. You see in the life of a stay at home parent, doing a long solo shift, the difference between anarchy and civilisation is a little more tangible than the rule of law. It boils down to this simple formula.

Civilisation

=

5 minutes at the start of day, ideally before 9am, for a shower during which time there are only happy background noises audible. These include Playschool, Peppa Pig, a chatty toddler or a cooing baby. Shrieking, crying and yelling are not happy background noises. 

+

20 minutes, at a bare minimum, in the middle of day where all minors are asleep at the same time or, at the very least, quiet in their places of rest

+

 5 minutes, at a bare minimum, between 5.30pm and 6pm where the carer has both* hands free (which is only achievable when no minor is demanding to be held) to assemble dinner.

Profound work isn’t it? Now when critiquing my theory, which I know you will, please keep a few things in mind. As I said this applies to a parent doing a long solo shift; for example where between the hours of 6.30am and 7pm there is no chance, whatsoever, of another adult responsible for the same children by blood, being present. Please also keep in mind that this is the baseline. The absolute bare minimum required to ensure a parent’s mental health is not too badly compromised come bedtime. 

Obviously I could throw in variables like “Toddler plays happily for 40 minutes with her blocks whilst baby sleeps allowing parent to attend to the sadly neglected housekeeping and feel a semblance of practical achievement before lunchtime” or “Both baby and toddler sleep for 2 hours simultaneously” or “No offspring engage in particularly maddening conduct”. Of course those variables do happen and, naturally, are the stuff that parenting dreams are made of. But we’re not talking dreams today. My theory centres on the borderline. When a solo parent is teetering on the edge, just one small tantrum away from insanity. Or, civilisation and anarchy as that unknown philosopher put it. 

Helpfully, after much philosophising, I can say with certainty that the difference between staying perched on the edge of sanity and crashing right over into more treacherous terrain, is when those three elements don’t come together. Because when each of those things fail to occur in a single day, well, it’s a little bit catastrophic.

By way of contrast, when they do occur, regardless of the day’s trials and tribulations, the results are fantastic. By ‘fantastic’ I mean you will have a parent who, at the end of the day, might sip a glass of wine with some satisfaction rather than being completely overwhelmed with a primal urge to down a bottle of scotch, despite disliking scotch, in a single hit and then rock quietly in the foetal position in the corner. Of course it’s just a theory. Feel free to pick it to pieces or give it a whirl.                                                       

Do you have any practical philosophies to share? They need not relate to parenting. I’m rather interested in theories that make any aspect of life easier.

*I am continually astonished at the number of tasks that can, when push comes to shove, be completed with one hand. But. I do find the assembling of even the most basic dinner requires both hands for at least a few moments. 

Balloons, bubbles and ballet shoes

This weekend marks the third birthday of the inimitable Miss I. How this has happened is quite beyond me. I can remember learning of her existence like it was yesterday. I remember my tummy growing with her and, lord only knows, I will always remember giving birth to her. In the three years that have passed since that long day my world has changed irrevocably. So while I can vividly remember so many milestones – big and small - in Miss I’s life I can barely recall life before her. I vaguely remember what it was like to wake up and not have a little person, or two, to look after but I forget how that felt or worked.

Around here I make a point of being really honest about living in a zoo with small children. I tell you how it feels to flirt with the possibility that you’re raising a violent sociopath or rearing a raging terrorist. I tell you that there are times when I feel like I’m doing it all wrong and I tell you when I realise that, maybe, I’m doing some bits right. What I don’t always tell you is that I am in the throes of a mad love affair. That on a daily basis my heart rushes with so much love that it is both thrilling and terrifying. That I am often overwhelmed, in the best possible way, by it. My love for Miss I and Miss L knows no bounds; it is visceral and raw and physical and lovely.

There have been so many moments throughout the past three years where I’ve concluded, either quietly on my own or in conversation with Mr G, that I couldn’t possibly ever love Miss I more than I did in that particular moment in time. That my heart would never again melt in a moment quite like that or that nothing would ever make my soul sing like she did that one time. That she would never again make me laugh quite so much. And yet those moments keep coming. My heart melts, my soul sings and I keep laughing. 

When Miss I turned one I thought my love for her had formed and was, in a sense, complete. It wasn’t. This weekend she’s turning three and the truth is my love has grown more than she has, which, in lots of ways, is even scarier than housing a terrorist in training. It is every parent’s prerogative to see the absolute best in their children so take this with a grain (or kilo) of salt. There are days when I watch Miss I and I wonder what on earth we did to deserve her. (The wonderful irony, of course, being the other times when I wonder the same thing "What did I do to deserve this??" in a completely different vain.)  

She is a headstrong toddler who regularly drives me to despair but she also has this spark of life that I never want to live without. She is fun and funny and doesn’t miss a beat. If I could I would bottle her up and sell her around the world just so others could share in the comedy that is life with Miss I.  

If I change so much as my socks, let alone my shoes or earrings, without her counsel, she immediately asks, “Why you change that Mummy?” eyeing me up and down, obviously disapproving of the fact she wasn’t consulted. 

When I use my angry voice to ask her to stop doing something she almost always retorts back, in exactly my tone, “Mummy, you don’t talk to me like that! I get cross when you no listen to me.”

When I accidentally put vegemite on her toast one morning when she said she didn’t want it and for the next four nights, as I kiss her goodnight, she cautions me urgently, “Mummy next time you no use vegemite otay?”

When we’re in the car and Miss L is crying loudly enough that neighbouring cars are probably concerned and Miss I yells out “MUMMY!! LULU’s CRYING MUMMY!!” as if I might not be aware. And then says “Oh. Otay” when I indicate I am in fact aware of the crying. 

When she overheard me say to Mr G I’d had a frustrating morning at the post office and she said “Mummy maybe you go to the hopidal and feel better?”

When she watched the garbage truck come and collect our rubbish and says "Let's ring Daddy and I tell him all about it."

When I pass her a bowl of porridge and she says "Really good sharing Mummy."

When we leave the shops after buying milk and she says "Mummy! Maybe we forgot to get me a cake?"

Or when I put Peppa Pig on tv for her and she says "Good boy Mummy."

Or my current favourite melting moment when she cuddled me and whispered “I love you the whole world Mummy.”

I could go on and on but the short of it is the past three years have been something else. This birthday is particularly exciting here at NABM HQ because, for the first time, Miss I is completely aware of the occasion. She's known her birthday is in May for quite some time and has been telling everyone "My birfday coming up really noon." 

We’re having a small party in the park and for weeks Miss I’s stipulations have been the same. She wants balloons, bubbles and ballet shoes. And a Peppa Pig birthday cake but that doesn’t start with B. What fun. 

F is for First World Problem

This is a small community service announcement to be filed under F, for ‘First World Problems’. The other afternoon I found myself caught up in one of my quarterly home tidying rampages. If you’re astute, which we both know you are, you can probably spot the problem immediately. Quarterly is clearly not often enough. If I had these rampages daily, well, they probably wouldn’t be rampages would they?  They would just be tidying my house. The problem is I feel like I tidy my house all day anyway. It’s just never perfectly tidy. There is always stuff. There’s always a basket of laundry to be hung, or folded or put away. There is ALWAYS something soaking in a bucketful of napi-san. There are always books out, blocks scattered and pairs of my heels* lying around.

Usually I just potter about and tidy as the day goes on but the trouble is that the minute I turn my back to tidy one mess another mess, or three, magically transpires. This is, of course, called life with kids and I find generally it’s easier to acquiesce and just accept there will be some level of clutter at pretty much all times. Which is mostly fine except for when I embark upon one of my quarterly rampages and do my best impression of a captain in the army or school principal marching about the place in utter disgust. When this happened the other evening the kitchen was at the top of my hitlist. My issue, or one of my issues to be strictly accurate, was with the, er, dishwasher. (This is where we start to swim in serious first world problem seas.)

My first world problem is that our dishwasher doesn’t dry anything that is plastic. And, because we live with two small children, at any given time our dishwasher is likely to be stacked at a ratio of one piece of crockery to six pieces of plastic. So every time I unstack the dishwasher, at least once a day, I need to stack three quarters of the load on the drying rack. But the drying rack is inevitably still stacked with other pieces of plastic that still haven’t dried yet because the drying rack isn’t big enough to fit all of it. I then have to dry some by hand to make room for the next load and it feels like I handle each piece approximately eight times before it can be put back in the drawer. It’s just another mini-arena in The Tetris Family Challenge but occasionally, or quarterly to be specific, it DRIVES ME BONKERS.

Anyway after my rampage we went across the bridge to have dinner with some friends. During our delicious meal (served on dishwasher friendly crockery) I casually, but seriously, raised my wet plastic dilemma. You can imagine how enthralled our friends were. “Gosh this Georgie’s a hoot! I mean the things she does and sees!! Her dinner party chat is gold standard!” Anyway our host Belinda was not only kind enough not to ask me to leave immediately but she also came up with a solution. Open the dishwasher and pull out the shelves in the morning and by midday they’ll be dry with no triple handling. And it works! GENIUS! So genius that I wanted to share it in case any of you are “struggling” (in fine first world style) with the same problem I was.

While I’m talking about this particular group of friends I also have to mention my friend Sally. She had her first beautiful baby a month before I had Miss L and has recently joined the blogging fray. She is funny and clever and is now blogging here. Drop by and say hi. (And ask her to whip up that raspberry, almond and chocolate cake she made last week). She’ll even tell you why she was on the news yesterday.

Do you have any first world problems you need solved? I'm sure Belinda will have a solution!

*My heels are, sadly, not scattered around because I’ve been wearing them but because my ‘party shoes’ are Miss I’s number one item of choice in our whole house.  

Rich perspective

I love reading. Newspapers. Books. Websites. Magazines. Blogs. Where there are words my eyes are happy to follow. I particularly like it when my eyes happen upon a bunch of words that change the way I’m thinking or feeling. This happened last week when I read this article that Rachel Hills wrote about the privileged poor. It made me realise that I have been carrying on like entitled royalty. Not out aloud or anything. There have been no tears over tiaras and no tantrums because no one will buy me a pony. My entitled princess tendencies are (mostly) invisible to bystanders. Actually, until now, they’ve been mostly invisible to me too. They’ve been quietly embedded in my psyche and I’d like to thank Hills for forcing me to burrow them out.

Rachel wrote about the growing number of Australians who consider themselves to be struggling despite being quite well off. She makes the point that it’s become quite commonplace to cry ‘poor’ when something even quite discretionary – a night out, a trip away, a new outfit – is out of reach. In her words:

“The result is … either you are “poor” and poised on the edge of bankruptcy, or you are “comfortable” and you never have to think about money at all. But being middle-class doesn't mean never needing to make a choice about what you spend your money on. It means having the wiggle room to choose in the first place.”

Reading that I realised that I’d fallen into that very trap. Of believing that I’m poor because I constantly juggle what we can and can’t afford. Last year I wrote about the inevitable stress that arises when there is little difference between incomings and unavoidable outgoings. A small change in our fiscal favour made a huge difference to my peace of mind and I was determined not to let it go. I let it go. A few things have obviously changed in the interim; having a second baby and being on maternity leave have certainly had an impact in strict budgetary terms. Regardless of the specific trigger for a while now I’ve been begrudging the fact I have to watch where every dollar goes. I dislike feeling stressed about money. I don’t like constantly doing sums in my head and having to say no to things because our bank balance won’t stretch that far. I hate receiving unexpected bills and I dream of doing the groceries without a strict budget looming large.

Now taken on their own I don’t think any of those admissions are particularly ugly. I doubt anyone likes worrying about money. The trouble is somewhere along the line it seems I developed the misguided assumption that I shouldn’t have to host those worries. So worse than just disliking a tight fiscal policy I’ve been feel slightly affronted by having to run one. Now I realise that sentence is not particularly pretty. It was actually tougher to type and share with you than it was to admit to myself. I honestly hadn’t realised I was thinking that way but Hills’ article made me see the error at the root of my discontent. Once I spotted it, in all of its unfettered privileged glory, I could challenge it. Because I’m so far from poor it is ridiculous. Having to be careful with money doesn’t make me poor; it makes me not rich. And there’s a big difference. I’m slightly ashamed but very grateful it took Rachel’s words for me to see that.

And I’ll be frank about my gratitude; it’s not entirely altruistic. While it’s confronting to realise I’ve been thinking like an entitled princess it’s also liberating. Because feeling hard done by, even just subconsciously, isn’t nice. And while I know, in all consciousness, that I’m not hard done by, I had fallen into the trap of thinking that in the fiscal department I am. I’m not. I don’t own a home or have a whopping nest egg but I also never have to worry about not being able to afford rent or not being able to feed the girls or pay our bills. Who knew that realising I’m not rich would make me feel so rich?

Now that I’ve made yet another unflattering confession can one of you please – even anonymously – share something you say or do or think that’s not ideal?? It’s in the circle of trust!  

What I wish I'd said to Tony Abbott

I’m kicking myself right now and it’s not just because I cooked wholemeal pasta last night and my lunch is pretty ordinary as a result. I’m kicking myself because I missed an opportunity to talk to a politician about an issue that is troubling me. I went to sleep last night thinking about the Opposition leader’s mooted paid parental leave policy. I read quite a few things about it yesterday, many of which focused on his line about women of calibre. I’m going to come right out and say that I am not Tony Abbott’s biggest fan. I’m far from it. But. I disagree that the phrase “women of calibre” fits neatly into the file of Mr Abbott’s most regrettable public gaffes.

He didn’t say that only women of calibre, being the highly educated professionals whom would benefit most from his generous policy, matter. He made the point though that those women and their contributions do matter and I agree with him on that. Wholeheartedly. So I’m not slinging mud on him for that but I do have my reservations about his policy. I went to sleep last night thinking about them. Now I’ll admit public policy rarely keeps me awake at night but as a working mother on maternity leave paid parental leave and childcare are pretty jolly relevant. So last night my mind quietly worked its way around Mr Abbott’s mooted plan and my own ideas.        

With that in mind, imagine my surprise earlier today when I found myself sitting next to none other than Mr Abbott himself. I took Miss L along to the doctor for her 6 month jabs this morning and there he was in the waiting room. No minders. No phone calls. Just sitting reading the paper. I mean what are the chances? I immediately thought this is my opportunity to have a quiet word. To voice my own ingenius policy ideas opinion, hear him out and walk away with a better idea of exactly who this politician is. 

But I didn’t. I sat in silence until he was called in and have spent the rest of the day regretting it. I let my chance for a private chat slip so have to opt for a public conversation instead. I am pressed for time so please forgive me if this seems clunky. As with any public policy, the challenges is always a matter of balancing competing needs with available resources. Because resources are finite and needs are practically infinite there are always going to be winners and losers. In every area of public policy that will be the case; it’s a matter of weighing up the competing needs and assessing which plan best satisfies the main objectives. One of the main, if not fundamental, objectives of any paid parental leave scheme is to keep parents in the workforce.

As far as Australia’s productivity goes increasing women’s participation in the workforce is a huge lever. Massive. The potential economic gains of more women working are considerable. The flow on benefit from that is it generates additional resources that can then be put towards meeting other needs. It’s a constant cycle. There are obviously social benefits too but I want to focus on the economy for now.

Obviously one of the primary aims of the opposition’s policy is to keep women connected with the workforce. In this regard Abbott’s policy is specifically geared towards rewarding the professional pursuits of highly educated women. Instead of being paid minimum wage whilst they’re on maternity leave, as they’re entitled under the current government’s scheme, they would receive their full salary. It’s generous and it rewards rather than punishes the choice to have children. Balancing motherhood with a career can be a fraught exercise and anything that makes it more palatable for more women is, in my humble opinion, fantastic news. But. As I mentioned earlier, resources are limited and the choice to reward one individual or group necessarily means another individual or group will miss out.

And this is where my opinion diverges from Abbott’s policy. I wish I could engage the productivity commission to draft me up some models to prove my theory but I rang and they’re busy. Clearly I’m kidding, they’re coming back to me next month. My unproven theory is that more women would be able to participate in the workforce more easily if the short supply of childcare was addressed. 

I don’t have the current statistics to hand but I do know that in June 2011 70,000 women were unemployed or not working in Australia purely because they couldn’t secure affordable childcare. These are women who want to work, which would not only boost their personal finances but also national productivity, but can’t because they can’t get a childcare position. Because the childcare shortage is not a myth. Childcare positions, particularly in capital cities, are like gold. The waiting lists are long and real and it’s a logistical hurdle so difficult to navigate that it trips many women up on their path back to work. Ask any pregnant woman or newish mother about their plans to return to work and I can guarantee the availability of childcare will be a real concern. It’s the reason the ASX-listed pharmaceutical company CSL spent $5million opening a childcare centre for its employees in 2011.

My current situation, echoed in many families, is a case in point. Despite putting Miss L’s name down at the centre Miss I attends a year ago I’ve already been warned it’s unlikely there will be a spot when I’m due to return to work in October. And if there is a position, there’s no guarantee it will be on the same days that Miss I attends. Which, as you can imagine, isn’t particularly useful.

You might say ‘Just get a nanny then’. The trouble with that is I’m not in the highest earning tax bracket which means the cost of a nanny is prohibitive. Nannies are not currently subsidised the way childcare centres are, so at a post tax cost of $200 or more, a day, it is not a viable option for many working women. It’s a catch many senior women acknowledge. If you earn enough you can afford a nanny but there are hoards of women who will never reach the upper earnings bracket because they can’t afford a nanny in the meantime.

Equally there are plenty of women, and men, employed in jobs that will never pay enough to cover a nanny. It doesn’t mean that them working is any less beneficial for their own finances or the broader economy. It just means they need access to affordable childcare.

So that's what I wish I'd spoken to Mr Abbott about. If he wants to get more women back to work, which I believe he does, then I think  funding the provision of more childcare positions and applying the rebate to nannies would give him more bang for buck than his current plan. I'd have even let him take my tremendous idea and claim it as his own. I still will. My baby is now awake so blogging time is over. 

ps WHY DID I STAY SILENT??