2020 vision
Posted: December 31, 2019 Filed under: LOVE, Self improvement, Thought For the Day | Tags: 2019 resolutions, 2020 hopes and dreams, 2020 vision, dancing, NYE 2019, singing, single mother advice, single mother dreaming, single mother tips, single mother truths 2 CommentsThe Pollard definitive guide to enjoying 2020:
Pat puppies and kiss kittens
Don’t vote for morons
Eat, drink and be merry
Don’t buy ‘beauty’ products
Stay off the internet
Help a refugee family
Read books
Unsubscribe
Stop buying plastic crap
Thank firies, ambos and nurses
Check your emotional baggage
Get fresh on the dance floor
Support the Uluru Statement
Be kind, even to dickheads
Don’t use the words onboarding, textural or disruptor
Buy the Big Issue
Sing every day
Bring home the facon (don’t harm piggies)
Love your friends
Swim in the ocean
The greatest of these is love
Posted: November 3, 2019 Filed under: LOVE, Parents | Tags: ageing, bible verses, dementia, Frank Sinatra, gratitude, grief, Jack Pollard, joy, love, love and marriage, MOTHER'S DAY, parenting, resilience, single mother role models 6 CommentsWhen I tell people my mum has dementia they invariably say,
“Does she still know who you are?”
She does when I hug her and hold her close and tell her I love her. Her brain may not remember my name but her body can feel that she loves me. I know it.
The gift of dementia is that I have had four years to say goodbye to my beautiful mama. Four years to create new memories and remember some of her old ones. To hear the same stories again and again so the family history is firmly locked in my brain until it is my turn to fade away.
Four years to hold her hands and tell her that she is still a devoted mother. Four years of visits to calm the madness rush of single mother life in my head while I put her hand in mine. Four years of quiet afternoons to sit with her in silence while I rub hand cream into her old dry hands. Four years of cups of tea and bickies. Four years of running away from the nursing home in tears with a broken heart while remembering all the small ways she loved me. Four years to be reminded how she cared for our dogs, yelled at me over homework, washed our clothes, fed us endless dinners and sang in the kitchen.
Mumma loved her career before kids but she loved us more. Her four kids and seven grandchildren were her life’s work. Having our family was the greatest joy of her life.
Four years of stories shared with whoever else came to visit. Four years being able to take in her I am your mother and I’m not going anywhere fierceness, and four years to realise that I don’t care any more about our differences, fights over my clothing and hairdos and politics, I feel grateful that she cared enough to argue with me.
Four years to look at old photos and realise what she built for us. Four years to be reminded that she introduced me to Stevie Wonder and Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald and taught me how to sing.
My mum interviewed Squizzy Taylor and met Frank Sinatra and talked to colourful Sydney racing identities and was invited to all the best parties when she wrote the social pages. And still my dad, my brothers and sister and I and our kids were the best part of her life. Not all kids get to have a mumma like mine.
Some families have their loved ones snatched away in an instant, but I’ve had time to be with her and hug her tight and tell her how much she means to me.
In the past year she has wet her pants and worn her clothes backwards and spilt dinners and tea all over herself. She has let her hair go and not worried about matching her top with her skirt. All the petty little problems of life have slipped away and all that remains is that my mum’s face lights up when my kids and I walk in the room. That is love.
I know my dad is coming to get her soon, they will get to be together again and I have to remember that on the days that I’m missing her so much that I can’t breathe.
My mum was from a family of godbotherers, devout Anglicans who often quoted the bible. This is the only verse I remember from years of reluctant Sunday school attendance (Corinthians)
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Single mother To Do List
Posted: August 12, 2019 Filed under: Self improvement, Single Motherhood | Tags: Advice for single mothers, mental health of single mothers, single mom struggles, single moms, single mother advice, single mother delusions, single mother sanity savers, single mother self help, single mother truths, Single motherhood, single mothers with attitude Leave a commentFeed munchkins
Laugh with best girlfriends
Verify your identity
Be fabulous
Embrace single motherhood
Pay all the bills
Find all the thrills
Bring home the bacon
Find app to block people in real life not just social media
Eat fruity wine and fruity fruits
Rage against the pale stale males in government
Stand up for girls
Find someone to collect my emotional baggage
Dance like instagram is watching
Drink tap water
Pat the cat
Thank your knees
Eat all the cheese
Hunt and gather
Educate people on the difference between your and you’re and he is and his
Sing like I’ve got 45 million YouTube followers
Izzy go fund yourself
Posted: June 22, 2019 Filed under: AUSTRALIA, Self improvement, Uncategorized | Tags: Australian rugby, bigots in the belfry, crowd funding, fake christians, fundamentalist Christians, go and fund yourself, god botherers, hate speech, Israel Folau, Justin Bieber, liars, rugby, thieves in the temple, what would Jesus do Leave a commentAnd all the clubs you used to fund your own ends
You think rugby will be lost without you, oh Iz for goodness sake
You think we’re crying ’cause you stopped playin’ well we ain’t
And Izzy we’ve moved along and I think you should too
Aussies don’t like you and we like everyone
And you for-profit-Christians won’t admit when you are wrong
You get so caught up in your hate, you can’t see what’s going on
But now we know, you’re better playing on your own
Well Izzy you should go and fund yourself
And if you think that we’re still holding on to you
Crikey
Posted: March 10, 2019 Filed under: AUSTRALIA, Politics | Tags: auspol, Australian Politics, feminism, International Women's Day, marketing, oops, pale stale male Australian politicians, political failures, where the bloody hell are you Leave a commentOn Friday, the Stephen Bradbury of the Liberal party Scott no friends Morrison made the worst International Women’s Day speech in the history of forever.
Simple Scotty said that men should not have to make way for women’s empowerment.
On International Women’s Day.
“We’re not about setting Australians against each other, trying to push some down to lift others up,” Morrison told a function organised by Australia’s mining industry.
“We want to see women rise. But we don’t want to see women rise only on the basis of others doing worse.”
On International Women’s Day.
What I love most about Scott no friends’ latest idiot utterance is that Labor don’t really need to do anything during this election campaign. Scott has placed his feet in concrete boots and the LNP ship is sinking faster than the rats can run. And it’s all his own doing.
As a rugby league man, Scotty the super fit sporty PM may not understand the concept, so here is the dictionary definition of ‘own goal’:
noun
1. a goal scored when a player inadvertently strikes the ball into their own team’s goal.
• INFORMAL•BRITISH
an act that unintentionally harms one’s own interests.
Ex liberal MP Julia Banks told a gathering at a separate IWD event that Morrison’s leadership style was akin to “Mad Men crossed with House of Cards.”
Just when the Australian people thought that Tone deaf Abbott defending a paedophile was beyond, along comes good old boy Scotty to make sure they’ll be in opposition for a long time. As we say in the land of Oz, “hold my beer.”
Now that you’ve stopped the votes, where the bloody hell are you retiring to Scotty? Time to book your place at the Hillsong happy clapper home for bewildered dinosaurs 🦖🦕
#AusPol
God only knows
Posted: March 3, 2019 Filed under: Politics, TRAVEL | Tags: Bible, Catholic church, charity, child abuse, faith, George Pell, Hope, human suffering, Jesus and the money lenders, love, Miranda Devine, poverty, priests who abuse children, so called Christians, Vatican, Vatican treasures, what would Jesus do Leave a commentIn 2017 I was lucky enough to visit Italy and I went on a tour of the Vatican. The impenetrable wall around Vatican City and numerous security cameras screamed inclusiveness to me. In the Vaticano museum, there are priceless works from an immense collection built up by Popes throughout the centuries, including some of the most renowned classical sculptures and important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the world. They own paintings by Leonardo, Van Gogh, Raphael, Picasso, Chagall and Dali for God’s sake. Why won’t the Catholic Church sell some of these artworks and antiquities to help the victims of child abuse by their priests? Or perhaps the world’s starving and homeless? When the gap between rich and poor has never been greater, why are ‘good Catholics’ paying for statues to be made and shipped from all over the world to an already over-stuffed museum? They could wipe out a generation’s problems with a few garage and property sales around the world. So why don’t they?
My visit was a few days before Pell was charged. After his arrest, in St Peter’s Square there were polizei, army and carabinieri on every corner and tourist monument. Pell was hidden away. Who could blame the poor victims who for years were ignored, if they decided to revolt against these monsters in power?
20% of Christian brothers are guilty of perpetrating or covering up child abuse. The Catholic Church pays to protect paedophile priests but argues over paying compensation to their victims when money for shelter and counselling could alleviate the suffering of those whose childhoods were robbed by sick perverts.
The Australia-wide Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse delivered its final recommendations in December 2017. More than 60,000 abuse survivors came forward. The suicide rate amongst males in Ballarat (Pell’s home city) is twice that of Melbourne. But still, some in the Catholic Church believe that their religion is being unfairly targeted. This is the organisation where all serving archbishops told the royal commission they would not report to police a colleague who admitted in the confessional to child rape.
And scumbag journalists with zero credibility defend them.
Members of the media who defend child rapists must be sacked. And a truly visionary pope who wanted to help victims would be a great start.
The church asked Catholics to pay for Pell’s defence team, they helped Pell raise money but try to avoid payment to victims. They initially refused to put in an interim care scheme and a lot of the Catholic diocese’ say they ‘intend’ to sign up for the redress scheme, despite lobbying government to cut it down. Something is seriously wrong with this supposedly moral institution. It’s almost as if paedophiles (and alleged paedophiles) are taken care of but not the victims. Jesus would kick these greedy money lenders out of the temple.
“And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.”
What the Catholic Church is really worth
The Trumping Show
Posted: February 10, 2019 Filed under: Politics, WRITING | Tags: American politics, bad TV, Donald J Trump, Ivanka Trump, Nancy Pelosi, nightmares, Politics, reality television, reality vs real life, scary TV, The Truman Show, White House, white trash Leave a commentI don’t watch much television, but the current top rating show coming out of Washington has me shaking my head in wonder at the scripting and production values. There is not enough animation, and Donald J Trump in the starring role of lead narcissist is too cartoon-like to be real. His skin is too orange and his suits too ill-fitting to be presidential. I’m starting to think that the US TV and movie-making industry has inflicted on us the most bizarre reality show the world has ever seen. We have been tricked into thinking that schlock TV favourite Donald Trump is actually the president of the United States. The wife who is only trotted out for photo opportunities role played by Melania adds drama, but her acting skills aren’t great. Through incredibly staged press briefings we have been lead to believe that the Orange Creep’s handbag designing daughter Ivanka is a foreign policy adviser and that this bizarre family actually sometimes live at the White House.
There are some great episodes of the show. The Singapore scenes with the actor playing a North Korean despot were brilliantly staged, despite the lack of plot resolution. And I do love Nancy Pelosi in the pivotal role of lead shit stirrer. Her cameo at this week’s State of The Onion address must be nominated for an Emmy award and a Nobel Prize.
In an era where white trash families and country bumpkins dominate our television screens, the Trump family are reality TV royalty. Candid Camera started this trend but it may be time to stop giving idiots so much air time. The Loud clan were the first reality TV family, let’s hope the Mar-a-Lago Trumps are the last. Honestly America, it is time to take out the trash. Bigly.
Back to school joy
Posted: February 3, 2019 Filed under: Parenting, Single Motherhood | Tags: back to school, parenting teens, school days, school in China, school is like a prison, single mother advice, single mothers of school age children, single mum tips, summer holidays are over Leave a commentIn 2019 I am transforming into an alert single mother because my child will be alarmed. No more teen tantrums to endure! I’ve decided to send my wandering youngest child to school in China, where she can wear a lovely new uniform. Even thousands of miles away I can easily track her whereabouts. I need to find a translator so I can read her school reports.
Big mother will find you #beyondtheschoolgrounds
Tell me Kondo, Kondo, Kondo
Posted: January 27, 2019 Filed under: Self improvement | Tags: Advice for single mothers, charity donations, decluttering, folding, kon Mari, Marie Kondo, Salvos, Shinto, single mother advice, single mother self help, single mother struggles, spark joy, Vinnies, vote them out 2 CommentsMarie Kondo san
Vinnies and Salvos may not agree but I’d like to say,
Doomo arigatoo gozaimasu
I hugged my teenager and she didn’t give me joy so I sent her to live with her father
I spent Christmas with my relatives and they didn’t bring me happiness so I moved away
I laboured through a summer party with pill popping friends who became obnoxious, so this year I won’t be answering their calls
My daggy trackie dacks don’t spark joy but the fact that they still fit me after three kids does so I’m keeping them
Folding up Dutton, Morrison and Abbott at the next election will help my thoughts become clear
Parking cops don’t speak to my heart, out they go
Throwing out “joyless” items originally struck me as a first world problem. But the end result may be that the world is made better