Saturday afternoon

Saturday afternoon 

Live show to go to
Neil Finn on the iPod
All else quiet
up and down stairs

Three flash fiction pieces
written in a flash - or three
Society of Authors,
wonder if they'll pass labia?

Cold air like soup the music has to stir
Fingers like claws the keys have to clip

Coco Cola on the airwaves
Feet down below his knees

In the glass on the lace cloth
In the fridge, waiting for the boys.

Wind outside like that's where it's at
Full-moon prediction, flooding on shore
Lock up your cat

OWW! Happiness is a warm cake tin II

It's my nearly-six-week anniversary of One Woman's World (OWW). Six weeks and we've already descended to cake. And too right. I have clocked up over a thousand page views, but that's probably me signing in and out, and M signing in.

HAPPINESS IS A WARM CAKE TIN 
40 poems in forty days 

Food lust

The power of mothers

I am aware of being watched... I am also aware that at the ages of 19 and 14, my boys are well old enough to make their own lunches... 

But will they make healthy lunches like this without me?

I have read The Power of Mothers (Celia Lashlie)  local guru on, mostly, raising boys tough-love style.  Her latest work is probably an attempt at balance. But in her bestselling book on raising boys CL is quite clear that mothers making their sons’ lunches into their teens is getting in their faces and teaching them that women are here to serve. She's right. I KNOW! The dads should take over at that point. Leave it to the blokes. 

M does make his own lunch these days. Perhaps there's a fraction of resentment that I make the boys’ lunches and not his, but only a fraction. And only perhaps. I used to make his lunch: Vegemite and alfalfa on 

 

Vogels, but not for a while.

I haven’t been feeding M since he was born - since before that indeed.. I have been feeding the boys since the day they were conceived and the fact that there is no one else on Earth who can say that about those two boys makes it special to me, and for me. M feeds them too, of course, more so this year since I started teaching dance. But I have done most of the feeding since the beginning. He has paid most of the bills, to be fair, and there are many ways to give sustenance other than with food feeding.

Boys five years apart can be tricky. When the older one is ready to evolve, to have thorough discussion, for instance, the younger one isn't - though he grows up faster than the first, generally. And when the younger one needs some extra affection I can’t really give it to him in front of the older one who has grown out of the affection but resents that his younger brother hasn't.  

But mostly it's just hard to stop feeding (serving) them. I feel programmed with Feed Your Boys software. I am slave to the programme that I merely play host to. 

It is different with daughter B (17). B is Independent with a capital I. She is out the door by ten past seven in the morning and not back till well after five. She makes her own breakfast and lunch entirely, though from the pantry that is stocked by her parents. I still make her dinners, and I enjoy doing that, because with B, and I think with all females, there's another whole level of food-appreciation than for boys. The boys want protein, quantity and service. Simple. Girls want EVERYTHING from food. From emotional sustenance to the ecstatic squish of whipped cream in the mouth. Everything. 

Not sure about the egg? Could this be a very Good Friday?

Boys generally respond much more to the Mum-as-helper role. Mum who would do anything for me role. Girls don't want so much to be served (as loved), any more than they want to serve, most of them. Various exceptions, of course. 

The ubiquitous pizza

Still, if I had not made the boys' spaghetti sandwiches this morning and not bought their Granny Smith apples at the supermarket yesterday for their lunch-boxes today, they would not be taking apple and lettuce and tomato and lean beef on rye to school and uni today. They would be taking Coco Pops and Coke. I know this because that is exactly what they did live off when we went overseas last year without them. Coco pops and Coke, and, of course, the ubiquitous pizza. 

A little strange

It's a little strange to be back discussing Marx...

This copy of his 'Selected writings' is mine from 1993, the year C1 was born. Marx and baby, that was my life.                                

Sorry, I am unable to pivot this picture to stand it up the right way. You'll just have to imagine it the right way up.

Daughter B is busy writing an essay for Politics on Marx and class antagonism. Really, the whole story of Marx. This book is for her. We were reading it together over fried eggs the other morning. She is becoming something of an expert. I might have once described myself thus. Not any more. I've forgotten all the nuances of his politics and theories. And when it comes to praxis, it's all in the nuance. Think of democracy. General public elections and equal voting rights are the very bare minimum for a functioning democracy, and yet that is all it takes in theory. In practice, democracy is a much more complicated thing. Even if the vote isn't rigged there are many ways to rig the gig of politics. Many.

Second-hand at least in 1993,
third hand at least in 2013

First Position

We saw this blast-from-the-past (for me) film First Position a couple of weekends ago.

Took the whole family. There's plenty in it for the boys, though the 14-year-old was less enthused than the 19-year-old.

From the title to the closing applause this film is well done. No better film on the subject, that I am aware of, has been made.

Documentary style, because of the other-worldly nature of ballet, perhaps especially ballet competitions, the end result is closer to a truer than life fiction than any fact-fatigued documentary.

Do young boys from Columbia really dream of ending up at the Royal Ballet School? Apparently. And we are all immeasurably better off for it.

This is the Columbian boy (16) in the poster. He can dance like we, most of us, can walk. He was made in every way to dance. Not to dance, when you are made that way (mind and body), would be a crying waste. The same goes for the girl adopted from Sierra Leone. Also the girl from Israel and the boy from Boston.

I recommend the film wholeheartedly. You're lucky if it's playing at a cinema near you (came out in 2011).

Sacha
(Former principal dancer of the Sydney City Ballet)

Only women clean... (and beta men) Housekeeping II: Vacuuming

Bloggers at large

It is time I made mention of my beta half's considerable capacity for cleaning, especially vacuuming...

It has come to my attention that I might have given the wrong impression in a recent blog post that I am saddled with the entire domestic cleaning load in our household, due to the fact that I am a woman. Wrong! That impression is wrong entirely.

Just because all women clean
Except, perhaps, for the queen



... doesn't mean...
that some men don't.
Some men do -  and
my man is one of them.

My man is a powerful and prodigious (?) cleaner, especially with the vacuum - which seems to be the cleaner-aid of choice for the men, probably due to its bulk. Weekend clothes washing is, in substantial part, his doing and domain, as well as the every-night wash up of the bulky stuff while I stack the dishwasher - an easier task.

He empties and refreshes all the bins (in a household of five), and prepares a cooked breakfast on Saturdays - and dinner if we're not out or entertaining. Since I started teaching my dance class he has begun making a chicken curry for dinner. The kids love it.



He routinely helps with chopping. Chopping and chatting in preparation for the evening meal. There's not much more to the preparation of some meals than chopping, chop and stir, so it's all a great help.

He often takes over Wednesday night's mince, and he supermarket shops at least twice a week. So often, in fact, that other wives make mention of seeing him there as if it were a  noteworthy (and a little unseemly) fact when men to shopped a little too often.

I don't employ a cleaner and never have. Seems like paying another woman to do my dirty work. Better to get the guys on board - and on the floor, I say. A lot of domestic work is done on hands and knees on the floor dealing with shit piss mould old skin and hair. Women should not be primarily responsible for that sort of dirty work, least of all in the employ of men.

Meanwhile, my hands are still rough and dry from yesterday's Jif.

Sacha

Sun in

Did I capture the sun in the petals? Not on the petals, in the petals? The sun was in the petals today, right before sun-set, at my bedroom window. All self sown, or self re-born at least. The sun and the rain reproduce to make this! Bliss.