Single mother To Do List

Feed 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


Politicians have a lot to be modest about

This week I woke up dressed in a diabolical fashion, with unflattering lighting overhead and inedible food by my bed. No, it wasn’t Mother’s Day. When I walked into the main hospital building that morning, the first thing I noticed was the drab decor; so hideous that the caring lovelies working there had tried to patch up the dullness with bright paintings, but I could feel the bacteria and sadness in the walls.

But we do have incredible care. When I came to after my anaesthetic, I had the most lovely pregnant nurse and I couldn’t get over how grateful I felt that we have great health care in Australia. Everyone was so caring I shed a few tears, I felt blessed that this was my first thought. I looked around and noticed that the hospital staff represented every corner of the universe, Africa, Asia, alien, Australia, America, Pacific Islands, Europe and bogan. Despite the racial hatred pollies who’ve received very few votes are trying to stir up, Australians are a mixed bag of nationalities who want to work and live together in harmony without politicians telling us we can’t.

I had a general anaesthetic so I could have Botox injected into my bum muscle (I speak fluent doctor yeah) to try to repair nerve damage from an operation I had in April. I did ask but the doctor wouldn’t do a 2 for the price of 1 Botox deal on my arse and my face. Bloody Medicare. Before I went under, my colorectal surgeon told me to eat soft foods, when I awoke I was served beef so tough it could have been used by our defence forces. And the doctor wouldn’t let me go until my blood pressure and pulse rate went up so I sat in a chair scoffing non-hospital food until I was allowed to leave. I’m happy to be home. On my return, there was a two-stage political coup erupting to change our Prime Minister. Here comes the revolution: We’ve changed to a conservative god bothering white male from a mega-rich white male. Plus ca change. And now that the weekend is here, and our right-wing politicians have finished throwing tantrums and travelled away from the Canberra bubble, I’d like to help those boorish pale males think about something other than themselves, perhaps the nation’s healthcare, education, domestic violence, babies dying in detention centres or even a treaty with the people who were here first.

Politicians, I can’t believe I have to spell it out for you, but most of you are ego driven and need Commcar drivers to help you get to work at Parliament House because you couldn’t find the place by yourself. You are public servants, we voted for you to serve us, not to watch you cower before opinion polls, you spineless idiots. Walk into the hospital, STFU, listen and watch how a diverse group of people co-operate, learn how they carry on their jobs without petty squabbles, working as a team to achieve incredible outcomes for the good of all humanity. This may help as most of you couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery. If you still don’t get it, be careful the door doesn’t hit your unBotoxed bums on the way out.


Thank you goddess Doria

After 10 years of single mothering with a few token attempts at financial assistance from the casual father, I’ve been feeling really tired and uninspired. Then a magnificent photo of Doria Ragland sitting on her own in a church pew, glowing with adoration for her daughter, appeared online. This image gave me the strength to keep going. I can’t recall seeing the essence of gold standard fierce single mothering captured in a photo before. Love is a verb, and Doria you have obviously been a woman of action.

I love you Doria even though I don’t know you. Lovely lady, no matter what happens you have given so many of us permission to shine, to keep going when we feel we can’t and to press on with the daily chores of mothering alone. Thank you oh divine goddess mental health social worker yogi free-spirited amazon mother, we needed you more than you will ever know.


Thank you for your time

We hope you enjoyed your stay in our hotel. Please fill out this survey so we can judge your level of customer satisfaction and we can annoy our staff with ridiculous statistics about their performance, even though you had one conversation with them that lasted all of two minutes. These surveys will take longer to answer than your actual stay in our facility. 

In a few days we’d like to call you to discuss the results of our tedious marketing logarithms. 

No!

Don’t call me when I’m feeding my kids

When I say I don’t have time for your idiot questions, I don’t have time, fuck off

Don’t call or email me when I buy a new phone, change my plan, check out of your hotel, buy groceries, fill up the car, change a frigging light bulb!

And stop paying idiots with dodgy marketing degrees to come up with new buzz words du jour:

#disruptor

#influencer

#worldclass

If you have to use the hash tag #authentic then perhaps you’re not

Please join our social networking channels, which have content about as interesting as having a pap smear. Enough. There are too many places to waste time already, I’ve lost track of the names:

Opportunity

Referral Key 

DoYourHeadIn

LinkedIn

Snapchat

Tinder

eBay 

GetYourHandOffIt

How about we all go to a party down the road and argue in real time. I’ll bring a pie


 


Poke ’em & go

Dear 11-year-old child,

I know you’re really busy saving the world by watching people playing Minecraft on Youtube all day, but I’d like to ask a favour. Could you please catch and keep the following Pokemon people/creature/alien/thingies/whateverthehelltheyare?

Cleandyourbedroom a saurus

Oddishwasher won’t empty itself

Clefairy liquid over the sink and wash the dishes

Remove the Vileplume from your sister’s walk on floor-drobe

Meowth and change the kitty litter while you’re at it

Machop up some veggies for dinner

Rapidash to the bathroom to hang up your sisters’ wet towels

Slowpoke the dunny brush around the toilet

Weedle your way out of whinging about housework no more

Thank you great light of my life

Mother dearest

Whistle While You Work – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs


More fairytales for single mothers

Once upon a time a lovely hairy mother lived with three not so little tweenage pigs.

One little piggie had a floor-drobe
One little piggie had a walk-on wardrobe
And the third little piggie had a large aversion to bathing
So the big bad wolf mother swept and swept and took all their clothing to the local charity shop
And the three little pigs lived in their own home
And the big bad mother wolf lived happily ever after


Single Mother Handy Hints for the School Holidays

Suggested school holiday menu:
1. Take it or leave it
2. Any food item that can be left in the oven and baked within an inch of its life is worth feeding to a child
3. Now is a good time for your kids to learn to cook
4. Like it or lump it
5. Tell your kids your family has been invited to appear on a reality TV show and vote yourself out of the kitchen. Run
6. Vegemite sandwiches are fashionable this week on Instagram

Suggested body armour to protect mothers from harm during long winter school holidays:
Helmet

Kneepads

Medication

Nanny

Eye Candy

Au pair

Shin pads

Babysitter

Chardonnay/Shiraz therapy

Pyjamas look great at 4 o’clock in the afternoon

Wear a onesie or matching tracksuit if you have teenagers, they’ll leave you alone in public


Thank you Siri

My fur child jumped on my iPhone this morning, causing Siri to ask “What can I help you with?”

Well Siri this morning you can help me with my poor taste in men, my lack of style, my mangy hair and my hangover. Then you can drive my kids to school, clean my flat, shop for food, disturb the mad voices in my head while I slumber and book me a holiday. Today I’d like to write, read, swim under a waterfall, sing, dance, do a yoga class, finish my tax return, laugh, have lunch with friends, eat lobster, watch a movie, drink expensive champagne, go sailing, walk on the beach, go to Bali and still have dinner on the table early


Double duty

Today is Father’s Day and I’m missing my long dead dad. Reading happy family messages on social media on a day like today is tough, especially when you’re doing double duty. I’m loving my strong male mates who are showing up and working hard and being great dads by making their children their main priority. I’m not loving the dads who show off their kids at public social functions but aren’t there for the hard graft of parenting. A part of me wishes that men in Western society would take the men who decide to be deadbeat and Disneyland dads to task. Tiger Woods can treat his wife and kids like shit but still be awarded player of the year awards. In our society it’s even easy to get away with not paying for your kids. I don’t know if it’s the role of government to chase up sperm donors who are not declaring income and crying poor then taking their new families out for dinner and getting on with a newly invented life as though the children they had first are a part of their past that they don’t need to revisit. The Child Support Agency doesn’t seem to be highly effective. I’m not advocating a return to the strict moral code of the 1950s but a few conversations along the lines of ‘mate lift your game’ and ‘real men pay child support,’ I think would help us ladies struggling with bearing the full load of child rearing. Yes we chose to have our kids, but in most cases, no we didn’t deliberately choose boys masquerading as men who have relinquished their responsibilities to their children. Real men man up.


Girl Power

On International Women’s Day I’m thinking that I’d love to be Emmeline Pankhurst in pearls fighting for equality for all women but I’m a little bit busy hanging out the washing and bringing home the bacon to feed three hungry mouths. So I’d like to say thank you to the ladies who are childless for maintaining the revolution so this mother of three daughters can raise them knowing that the sisterhood is striving to make our world fair. Whether you chose not to be a breeder, or you had the choice taken from you by fate or circumstance, I’m grateful for the work you’re doing. I believe childless women are desperately needed to fight for equality by us sleep deprived mothers who’ve temporarily lost our brain power because we’re helping finish homework. Thank you for organising the petitions, running the rallies, writing the articles, alerting me to them on Twitter and for keeping watch while this mother bakes. Sisters I will join you at the barricades as soon as I can find a cheap babysitter.

“Though we adore men individually, we agree that as a group they’re rather stupid…”