Love in the time of blended families

A poem

We say I love you, and if we’re still together on Boxing Day, Easter Wednesday, the day after the kid goes back to school we may survive as a couple by detaching from your teen’s nightmare behaviour

Your son looks like Elvis but he sings like a drunk footballer

I adore you but your brother’s second wife’s extended family will poison me slowly with their frozen coleslaw

I’d really like to grow old with you but your son’s new girlfriend has a voice that curdles milk and I can’t bring myself to help you raise her kids

Your touch is tough to resist but the complaints from your mother and her coven of neighbours about my cooking have reduced my brain capacity

You soothe my jangled nerves but your child’s penchant for snakes is a reptile too far

I really like your daughter but another netball match will kill my will to live

I love you but I can’t add another mother in law to my collection

Shakespeare described step parenting best:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom


Traditional values

Thia week Australia celebrated a victorious YES vote for marriage equality. After all the hate that was unleashed on the LGBTQIA community,  it was beautiful to see my queer friends celebrating with their allies.

The religious hypocrites in the Anglican church spent $1million on an advertising campaign for the NO vote. ONE MILLION DOLLARS as homeless elderly people live under bridges and in cars.

I’m happy that most Australians stood up and fought for our friends so that we are all equal under the law. My gay friends have been bashed, spat at, ridiculed and put down by family and so-called friends and strangers. I’m writing this for all the times they’ve heard, “I don’t mind gays, but,” for all the times they’ve heard someone use the statement, “That’s so gay,” in a derogatory way. It breaks my heart to think of the pain they’ve experienced during this hateful campaign that could have been avoided if PM Turnbull had any courage.

All the gay parents I know have had to choose their path carefully, to consider what parenting really meant. I know happy, healthy kids who have two mums and two dads, and they’re thriving. My kids have one parent available to them 24/7 and they’ve had trying times. Heterosexual parenting is more likely to expose kids to harm.

These are the politicians who didn’t have the courage to vote yes or no. Remember their names at the next Federal election:

As Ellen de Generes said, “Here are the values I stand for: honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you want to be treated and helping those in need. To me, those are traditional values.”


Yes mum

My 90 year old mother has dementia. The word dementia comes from the Latin dementiae. In the dictionary, it is defined as, madness, distraction or folly. The mum I knew is slipping away and all I can do is massage her dry skin with rose scented cream, hold her hand and try to bring her some joy. 

Some weeks the phone calls from my mother are so numerous, angry, repetitive and bat shit crazy, that I find myself glancing at shite online trying to distract myself while I listen to her tell me stories that I’ve heard 100 times. These conversations become so bad, that reading updates on LinkedIn seems like a good idea. 
But this week I found the upside to my mother’s dementia.We had a cup of tea and then she handed me her mail.
“Do you know what to do about this?” she said. I looked at the envelopes and realised that amongst the bills and a letter from Centrelink, was the ABS voting form for the Same Sex Marriage survey. I grinned.
“Yes mum, yes I do. If any of your friends here in the nursing home need help with this, I can help them too.” Helping people, that is what Christians who want to heal the world can do.


I don’t mean to be rude but…..

When married people say,

“My husband/spouse/ball and chain is away for a weekend, a week or three months, so I’m a single parent,” I grit my teeth.

No, you’re not. Your partner, though absent, is still contributing financially and emotionally to the other partner’s well being and that of the children. and when the absent partner returns they often do things that compensate for their absence. Single parenting with no other parent helping financially, mentally and emotionally on a day to day basis is not how children should be raised. It’s too much stress on one person.

Stress makes us humans crazy and sick, so my oldest childhood friend and I, who is also a single mum, have escaped. By the time you read this we will be somewhere in Norway searching the fjords for strapping vikings. Our dear friend bought us air tickets so we could attend his wedding in Oslo. I won the lottery when it comes to the wealth of my friendships. Skal!

Motherhood is not what you gave up to have your kids, but what you gained from having them


I found love on the internet

March is proving to be the month of love, I’ve been inundated with offers. I was initially reluctant to try online dating, but after reading this email, I’m not going to be shy about signing up to meet lonely singles in other countries.

Teligence. each one Rihts reserved *every one models and memberfs of thnis web site are 18 years or mature -males’s unattached Chatline
Hard and sexual activity cycle: after a touch of the floor of concerns. were the bed room with out herr navel.passed out something ahhhhgh oye fck her specs by means of.
To clean coordinate to drink lot of her manners. try this had been assured often regarded actually a bunch annd draw me pissed off. through my material comfort to discharge herr assemble to his velocity and picfked in the air. mee as iit one way or the other might, under the courtyard. three2nd, my orifice rubbged the taking part in ftv mannequin swinging doorways and watch.

Him from the kitchen passion by the side of the powercul searchlights and
them over. My dick by means of in the least oily unsettled hittingg her and stood around icq.homosexual small talk delivery van, i used to decuce that it
waas cribbing.

He’s sent me so many messages, but I think in person Corgi Bernardi is the strong, silent type. I hope so.


I’m moving to China

China’s singletons celebrate Singles Day (or ‘bare sticks’) as an alternative to Valentine’s Day on November 11 — or 11/11, the date representing all the lonely people. Being single on Valentine’s Day is a big problem in China, where there are millions more men than women because of the country’s one-child policy. Sitting on the bus with no one beside me is fun, but I’d love to celebrate being alone with other sad singles, is anyone throwing a blind date party tonight?


Looking For Mike Brady

In three weeks I’m performing my second solo stand up comedy show at The Factory Theatre, and I’m hoping more than four people and a dog come to see me perform. My show is called Looking For Mike Brady. Hopefully my future husband will be an architect like Mike Brady, because architects earn enough money to support a wife, 6 kids, a live in housekeeper, holidays in Hawaii and a big house. But knowing my luck with men, my future husband will probably be sitting in the audience disguised as a happily married gay man. I’ve written some silly songs and a whole lot of new material and if I can remember all of it I think it will be a great night of laughs. You can buy tickets here: sydneyfringe.com

Bill & Boyd – Put Another Log On The Fire


A long pause

Let us stop for a moment as we remember today was the birthday of the playwright Harold Pinter. The fabulous modern showgirl David Lee Roth was also born today.

As I reflect on my single mother status and wonder if I should be married and living in happy couple land, I think of famous marriages in history:

On this day in 1975 Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton celebrated wedding No. 2.


50 and shifty

I dreamed a dream in time gone by…. As my birthday nears I am thinking of what I want to do with the rest of my life. When I turn 50 (in about 20 years) I will dye my hair pink, drive a sports car and be married by an Elvis impersonator in Las Vegas. I just have to catch me a husband who will behave himself. I will sing my own song and never, ever eat celery again.


We got married in a fever

Being the true romantic single lady that I am, it came to my attention that February 14 was a really bad day for a lot of mature people who are only five cats away from a sad and lonely life. The last time I gave a Valentine’s card was back in the late 70s when I ran to the house of a beautiful blonde boy I had a crush on to deliver my card featuring my carefully disguised handwriting. After I dropped my love note in his letterbox I set a personal best time running home from his house so he wouldn’t know it was me who’d sent him a declaration of undying love (that lasted about 3 weeks).

Apparently condom manufacturers love Valentine’s Day but for those of us who would like to forget this commercial celebration of romance, please remember that some highly successful marriages commenced today, including Elton John and Renate Blauel, Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid and Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee.