Oh daddy oh
Posted: September 11, 2016 Filed under: Parenting, Parents, Self improvement, Single Motherhood | Tags: child support agency failings, Julie London - Daddy, real men pay child support, single mother struggles, single mothering, single parents Leave a commentLast Sunday I posted a picture of me wearing a T-shirt with the words
REAL MEN PAY CHILD SUPPORT
emblazoned across it. There was a big reaction. Some men reacted with the predictable ‘not all men,’ and one friend responded like this,
Nothing but a walking sperm donor, he doesn’t get to be honoured with the title of DAD. I have nothing but respect and awe for the strength and perseverance you’ve shown in being both mum and DAD. Too bad some other men are so fragile as to think you are talking about them.
Another response was,
When men who don’t pay child support are shamed, they tend to retreat from discussion and challenge on the subject. They go into a defensive stance that blocks out even mild inquiry about their responsibilities, let alone an outright attack on their claim to manhood.
Which made one poster so mad, they said,
Why don’t the good men encourage these men to man up to responsibilities?
Can men can hold other men to a set of values? The ‘men’ I know who dodge paying for their kids have no values and feel no shame, they’re not capable of it. And their families don’t hold them to account. They come from a long line of men who avoid responsibility and any kind of admission that their behaviour needs to change.
When a woman lives in constant financial stress, lying awake night after night wondering how she’s going to get by, worrying if the electricity is going to be disconnected, knowing she will send her children to school with sniffles because she doesn’t get paid if she takes a day off work, her kids suffer. The children become stressed because their mother is not present. She’s not focused on her kids, she’s too worried about how she’s going to pay the rent and when she’s going to get a good night’s sleep.
What annoys me most is the people who aid them. How does a ‘man’ go from earning $120K per year then within a week have a taxable income of $28K? How does a ‘man’ declare a taxable income of $19K a year when his rent and bills total more than $30K? How do these liars sleep at night?
I understand not respecting or trusting your ex, but making your children suffer? I don’t get it.
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Daddy
Posted: September 4, 2016 Filed under: Parenting, Single Motherhood | Tags: Father's Day, great dads, ladies choose wisely, love, single mother dilemmas, single mother self help, single mother struggles, single mothering by choice 5 CommentsOn Friday I posted a picture on Facebook of me wearing a T-shirt saying ‘Single Mothers Rock’ with my daughter at her school Father’s Day morning tea, with the caption:
What do you wear to the school Father’s Day breakfast when the father does a no-show? My favourite T-shirt #subtle #singlemothersrock
I hadn’t woken up that morning thinking I’d make a statement with my outfit, but when 350 people liked the photo it made me think about how we bring up kids in 2016. Lucky I didn’t wear this T-shirt
My girl was in tears when her father wasn’t there like her friends’ dads; really how hard is it to schedule your work diary and show up to primary school for an hour for Father’s Day? And that is the easy part of parenting. Not going to the mother or father’s day breakfast at school is a missed opportunity for extra helpings of love from your kid. It is sad for her, but very predictable for me, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. I’m disappointed for her because I had a very committed dad, so I know what it feels like to be showered with love from your papa.
There were other single mums there, even a few grandparents, luckily our school puts the invitation out to anyone who is a special person in each child’s life. It’s hard for the kids who don’t have two parents. Then I heard about a woman banned from attending Father’s Day celebrations at her son’s school because she was the wrong gender. The father of the child lives overseas. Why can’t they include that mum as a VIP guest? In the 21st century maybe it’s time to get rid of the gender specific events at schools.
Today I’m going to the footy with a devoted dad to celebrate his special day because I think it’s important to say thank you and well done to our loved ones. So Happy, Happy Father’s Day to all the beautiful dads, including those like my wonderful papa Jack Pollard who are fathering from the skies. I know he’s watching over my beautiful girls and I was blessed to have a dad like him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r92A7ndnZk
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Poke ’em & go
Posted: August 28, 2016 Filed under: Parenting | Tags: Advice for single mothers, crazes, love, mental health of single mothers, parenting, pokemon Go, single mom dreams, single mother delusions, single mother dreaming, single mother struggles, Single Mum, Whistle While You Work - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Leave a commentDear 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
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Mature
Posted: August 21, 2016 Filed under: Self improvement | Tags: ageing, cougar mother, growing old disgracefully, maturity, Simply Irresistible (Extended Version) - Robert Palmer, single mother, single mother sanity, single mother self help, single mother struggles, single mother woes 4 CommentsThis year I’m starting to feel older. There are signs. Plastic surgeons are now following me on Instagram, looking for business. One day I went to work wearing no make up and three people asked me if I was unwell. My youngest child has also been helpful while looking at family photo albums.
“Look at that photo mummy, you have no crinkles.” Thanks for the reminder about my ageing face honey, I think you caused some of those crinkles.
One night a few months ago she was ill, and I held her over the bath to catch her vomit. When she stopped I swung around to wipe her feverish head and a strange woman stared at me from the mirror; a grumpy, frowning, middle-aged harridan holding a sickly-looking kid. Oh God, it was me. I’m sure I’m still 15 years old checking for pimples, how did the old bag take over my body? Do I exorcise her with Botox and skin peels? Some days I long to be young and dumb and pretty.
My lack of fashion sense doesn’t help. Mostly I am a slovenly mother, which is unfashionable in the current air brushed social media perfection climate. My winter look has been Patty and Selma flannelette pyjamas, stained t-shirts and no bra. I should make more effort with my appearance, my look is either dragged through a bush backwards hair or trying to put on as much make up as a drag queen. But I don’t want to be 49 years old and still dressing to impress a male, which is strange for a woman whose shelves are filled with feminist literature.
I do hope I’ll grow wisdom by the time I’m 50, because I am at an age where it is easy not to give a rats any more. My skin is dry and my arse is sliding down the back of my thighs. I wish I had the energy to care. I may be stating the obvious for those of you in your 50s and 60s but losing our youthful shimmer is challenging.
Some mornings my youngest stares at me then looks in the mirror.
“I want hair like mummy monster,” she says. I look at her, at my mangy head in the mirror, then at her again. Is she taking the piss? Having children is exhausting but my kids have also made me a better person. Youngest has improved my wardrobe. We went into a op shop last week and she said, “This is a nice cougar dress for you mummy.”
Simply Irresistible – Robert Palmer
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Food for thought
Posted: August 14, 2016 Filed under: exercise, Self improvement | Tags: bacon, diet schmiet, ethical food, food for thought, Have you seen the little piggies on my breakfast plate?, hearty winter meals, How Much Is That Doggie In The Window - Patti Page, jumping to conclusions, piglets, single mother cuisine, single mother kitchen crisis, single mother struggles, walking fish, yum 2 CommentsPeople tell me I’m full of it. I think they mean good advice, so in the coming weeks I’m going to dish out advice for my friends who are feeling a little self-helpless. This week’s post is about healthy food for your kids. Actually it’s not, it’s about my gluttony because feeding children year after year is as dull as Donald Trump. I’m going to help you get a summer-ready body. Just joking, as if I care what your body looks like, I’m too busy feeding my face.
What we consume in summer is not that important. What we eat in winter is of great consequence. At the moment eating is my favourite hobby after sleeping and inhaling chocolate. After a cold northern summer sojourn, where I ate croissants every day and drank some kind of alcoholic beverage every night, I’m fading away to a shadow on the waif diet, too much coffee and not enough cake. I must eat more bacon and egg rolls now I’m back home living with my vegan children. Luckily my youngest is still a carnivore, thank the Lord (whoever she is). Last week my two eldest kids were out when I got some groceries home delivered, and I discovered that the supplier had given me a package of extra fatty porky goodness to sample. Spying it, my baby girl said,
“Mum can we eat some bacon because my sisters aren’t home?”
“HELL YES,” I squealed because no matter what they say, Facon or Veg-acon or whatever they call it is not the same. All those products labelled vegetarian sausages or burgers or tofu or whatever other flavourless stuff that gets churned out in a factory is called tastes like cardboard shavings.
My girls have made me watch some harrowing films lately and I hate what the meat industry does to innocent animals. And I really am very sorry little piggies, you are cute, and the way you are farmed is wrong, I just wish you didn’t taste so good.
How Much Is That Doggie In The Window – Patti Page
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More fairytales for single mothers
Posted: August 7, 2016 Filed under: Single Motherhood | Tags: blessed, clean freaks, domestic slavery, housework, mental health of single mothers, mothering, OutKast - Roses, single mother delusions, single mother sanity, single mother struggles, Smotherhood, smothering, so lucky, three little pigs Leave a commentOnce upon a time a lovely hairy mother lived with three not so little tweenage pigs.
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I miss my dad
Posted: May 29, 2016 Filed under: LOVE, Parenting | Tags: daddy's girl, David Bowie - Everyone Says Hi, father figures, fatherhood, fathers and daughters, grandpas, great dads, I love my dad, love, parenting, single mother struggles, single mothers who had great dads Leave a commentThis week marks 14 years since I lost my dad (down the back of the couch, it was a big lounge suite). My dad was hard-working, larger-than-life, full of energy and a bit of a nut with a great sense of humour. I miss him every day.
I’m now at the age where too regularly my friends are losing their dads. Great dads who worked hard and weren’t around that much when we were young because they had to feed us and pay the bills and blokes of that generation were taught to get on with it and not complain. Lovely men who then became gorgeous grandpas who made up for the time they’d missed with their kids by sharing their attention and dad jokes with our kids. Now they’re old and frail and leaving us. As a single mum I could really do with my dad around some days, but life goes on with him in our hearts.
Farewell grand dads and grandpas. We miss you so.
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You put a spell on me
Posted: February 14, 2016 Filed under: LOVE | Tags: allergy to happy couples, happy coupleland, immortal beloved, Living Colour - Love Rears Its Ugly Head, love, love attacks your brain, love makes the world go round, my mind is gone, single mother joys, single mother struggles, Valentine's Day, William Shakespeare quotes Leave a commentHappy Valentine’s Day to all the single mothers and fathers, hope you get lucky today with chocolate kisses and your children wake up smelling like roses. Remember it’s better to be single than fall for a dating scam online. As that well-known expert on internet dating Shakespeare said,
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom
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Worry wart
Posted: June 17, 2015 Filed under: Single Motherhood | Tags: Charlie & Lola, Chekov quotes, harried mothers with worried faces, music helps, parental worries, Radiohead - No Surprises [Glastonbury 2003], single mother fears, single mother struggles, tired unhappy, worried single mothers Leave a commentIt must be a mother thing. I don’t remember lying in bed worrying half the night when I was childless. That is probably because until I had kids I did not have a sober night to ponder or reflect. I spent my twenties drunk as a back packer, talking shit like a complete tosser until 5am. Now I spend my nights wide awake fretting about important issues:
Are tomato farmers pissed off with Charlie and Lola?
Will my 10 year old drown at her school swimming lessons and no one notices?
Is my face always going to look this tired, cranky and old?
Are we ever going to have political leaders with bravery and vision?
Is a Paddlepop a well-rounded meal on a Friday night when I’m exhausted?
“Any idiot can face a crisis – its day to day living that wears you out”
– Anton Chekov
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Double duty
Posted: September 7, 2014 Filed under: FEMINISM, Parenting, Single Motherhood | Tags: casual fathering, Child Support Agency Australia, child support agency failings, deadbeat dads, disneyland dads, Father's Day, fathering when he feels like it, happy families, Julie London - Daddy, man up, mental health of single mothers, real men pay child support, responsible parenting, single mother sanity savers, single mother struggles, single mother truths, single mothering 2 CommentsToday 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.
loupollard 