emma_in_dream | Entries tagged with rant

Arguably working part-time is the best of both worlds. At the moment, alas, it feels like I am being squashed between about eleventyone competing priorities.

Things at work are insanely busy with 13 major projects that need to be completed by the end of the year. But staff are leaving all the time, there is no certainty about the restructure and whether we will get our new positions. We are so busy that I have been asked to work more hours, which I would love to but...

Ruby is incredibly clingy. With great reluctance she has accepted that I have to work two days a week but she starts asking where I am about two o'clock every day. She says that her favourite days are the days she spends hanging out with me.

And she is never exactly robust. She had a fever on Tuesday, spent the day at my parents, came home, still had a fever, did not sleep all night (not true - one period of an hour and a half), then the next day she was obviously really sick but I had a big meeting at work so I took her to my parents. My Mum was out and by the time I picked her up she was really ill and the GP redirected us to the hospital. She was eventually sent home, when they decided she has a virus but she was really dehydrated and obviously I should have been with her.

So the entire afternoon consisted of us going to medical things, Ruby crying, Pearl being bored, me being phoned by work to be asked about moped licensing, me setting up the delivery of the new mattress for the next day, asking a friend to wait at my house to pick up the shopping that was being delivered. (THANK you!)

As we were driving about the car kept stalling (because it is hopeless in the heat). I know we need a new one but I just want to wait til next year to work more hours because then Ruby will be in preprimary every day and I can work more hours but still be with her after school so she won't freak out.

And basically I just have too much to do and I cannot do it all and it is only for another few months but I have no more energy left and I am so tired.

Today was the alternating Thursday of term which means Ruby was meant to have school. I had been literally fantasising about this since last Thursday (when I had extra training and also a vomiting bug).

'Don't worry,' I said to myself, 'There's only training on Thursday and Friday. Then the insanely busy weekend with multiple children's parties, father's day, swimming lessons and more, and then two and half days at work, literally running from one task to the next, and then it will be Thursday and I can sleep for several hours.'

Except no. Ruby was really sick so no rest for the wicked. As it turned out, it was probably for the best as the house had not been cleaned in over a week and lunch for Pearl on Wednesday was literally me giving her a bowl of honey and pancakes and her not eating the pancakes. Honey for lunch and I hadn't even had time to clean up the spills she made on the floor.

I discussed it with my mother and I really do need to impress them at work because of the restructure, so perhaps I can offer up the alternate Thursdays to increase my hours. But this makes my heart literally break because I feel like I am having some kind of massive mental breakdown and I just need some time to myself and I need to not be with my children all the time.

I wonder if there is something in the idea of a seven year itch, as Pearl is seven and I am so tired of being with the children constantly when not at work. Even thinking about the times when I have had time off are not cheering me, because I keep thinking about how pitifully small they are (some time at Swancon, my birthday lunch and a movie so far this year which is about typical for a year but I just really want more time).

Also, I feel horribly mean at the moment and was not even happy when my co-worker won $200,000. I just thought that she and her husband don't need it as they have two incomes in their household whereas we have half of one.

Basically I am teetering on the edge of some kind of break down but I really don't see how I can make things better until school starts next year. Which is not that far away, so I must emulate Miles Vorkosigan and get over the heavy ground as easily as I can.

I don’t really understand the Treasurer’s latest thought bubble. How could GST be applied on small purchases from overseas?

Take me, for an example. I buy quite a few books from small, second hand bookshops in England and the USA, usually out of print books that aren’t available here. Or in-print books that aren’t bestsellers and so aren’t available here.

Is Hockey actually proposing that Mr OverseasTinySecondHandBookShopOwner is going to note I live in Australia, deduct 10% from the price and post it off to the ATO for him? Admittedly, I do find most of the shops through search engines like Booko or Better World. Am I to instead imagine that Ms OwnsABigBookStoreNetworkService will think that it sounds like a brilliant idea to increase the price of all their books by 10% with a 0% corresponding increase in profits for them? I think not.

I guess they could massively increase the number of customs inspectors and open every parcel. ‘Hmmmm,’ says Mr Customs Officer, ‘This out of print biography of a Victorian author was sold at $20, so that’s an extra $2 I must charge the addressee before I can let her have it.’ Can’t see that being a very good way of making money.

Or it might be possible to get the banks to note all your overseas purchases and siphon off some money. Ms BigBankOwner would, I assume, leap at the chance to add an extra fee to all overseas transactions – 10% GST plus 5% for the bank? Plus I would assume the banks can’t tell the difference between me buying something overseas online and me actually going overseas and buying something, so that would add another whole layer of complication.

I honestly can’t see how this could possibly make money, but I do see how it could make some retailers not want to sell to Australia. Let’s face it – we’re not exactly a priority as it is. It’s a small market, a long way from anywhere else, with high postage costs. If the retailers are then expected to act as arms of the ATO and collect money for Hockey, I can see some just pulling the plug on sales here.

No doubt the technologically sophisticated will manage to work around this, with VPNs or overseas credit cards. But I am not technologically sophisticated. I am already thwarted in my efforts to buy some things – for instance, I can’t download some TV shows from ITunes because they aren’t available in Oz until Foxtel has used them. If I am to delay buying the type of books I like until my local book store stocks them, then I might as well give up right now on reading anything other than diet books and Dan Brown.

My workplace has gone nuts, with the new manager announcing lower pay for everyone. I called the union and now it is just lower pay for some of us! I am now the union delegate, and so every single day consists of people telling me how these grim changes will affect them.

I note also that even after our new office is set up, there is no guarantee of a return to a state of not-being-nuts, as the new commissioner seems hell bent on a restructure that removes a lot of people. I can't really go for a new job now, as I am part-time looking to expand, so it is a matter of hanging on. God, what an endurance race.

Which would be easier if Centrelink had not overpaid me, so now I will be repaying them. It's yet to be settled but I would think realistically five years to pay it back. So, bright side, I live in a country with a safety net and when they overpay you don't get charged interest.

Once those things are sorted I will be able to tell if what hours I'll be working/what I will need to do for child care now that my Dad is about to begin dialysis. Living in this state of indecision is not very me.

I got a new washing machine for a good price. Then installing it turned out to be a nightmare, with the first guy 'installing' it without actually turning on the taps, leaving them jammed. Then the second guy came and did mammoth work and it has cost $900 to set up. Oh my God, why can nothing in my life ever be simple or straightforward?

Ruby was sick over the weekend. Then I was sick.

And I have taken today off work to go to Pearl's teacher interview, let the guys in to do mammoth plumbing works, and sleep.

I feel much better, though, frankly, a longer rest would be better. A less stressful life.

Weep. Weep. Centrelink just contacted me to say that they've noticed that my income was incorrectly entered - a transposition of digits which they acknowledge was clearly their fault. Consequently I owe them a heap of money. God, how I hate them. If they allowed information out as well as in, it would be possible to check your income against what it should be and stop them from making this kind of error (third time in four years).

So, instead of thinking about the *ongoing* nightmare of dealing with Centrelink, I will tell you about Charles Dickens' *David Copperfield* (1850).

I've just read it for the first time. It was Dickens’ ‘favourite child’ and it has everything he does best: vast, interwoven plots, comic grotesque characters, the development of the hero over time, poverty, riches, and very, very badly characterised women.

Dickens is notorious for not being able to write women and this is a draw back in a novel where the pov character marries twice.

Rather than doing a proper review, I want to talk about David’s first love, Dora. Reportedly the originator of the phrase ‘dozy Dora’, she is a ‘favourite child of nature’ made of ‘sweetness, light and air’. She is in no way an adult, but is constantly described as doll-like.

To me she comes across as distinctly mentally challenged. Here is the scene where David has to break the news to her that his aunt has lost her fortune so he is indigent and will have to work hard and live frugally when they are married.

Dora came to the drawing-room door to meet me; and Jip came scrambling out, tumbling over his own growls, under the impression that I was a Bandit; and we all three went in, as happy and loving as could be. I soon carried desolation into the bosom of our joys—not that I meant to do it, but that I was so full of the subject—by asking Dora, without the smallest preparation, if she could love a beggar?
My pretty, little, startled Dora! Her only association with the word was a yellow face and a nightcap, or a pair of crutches, or a wooden leg, or a dog with a decanter-stand in his mouth, or something of that kind; and she stared at me with the most delightful wonder.
'How can you ask me anything so foolish?' pouted Dora. 'Love a beggar!'
'Dora, my own dearest!' said I. 'I am a beggar!'
'How can you be such a silly thing,' replied Dora, slapping my hand, 'as to sit there, telling such stories? I'll make Jip bite you!'
Her childish way was the most delicious way in the world to me, but it was necessary to be explicit, and I solemnly repeated:
'Dora, my own life, I am your ruined David!'
'I declare I'll make Jip bite you!' said Dora, shaking her curls, 'if you are so ridiculous.'
But I looked so serious, that Dora left off shaking her curls, and laid her trembling little hand upon my shoulder, and first looked scared and anxious, then began to cry. That was dreadful. I fell upon my knees before the sofa, caressing her, and imploring her not to rend my heart; but, for some time, poor little Dora did nothing but exclaim Oh dear! Oh dear! And oh, she was so frightened! And where was Julia Mills! And oh, take her to Julia Mills, and go away, please! until I was almost beside myself.

So they agree to maintain the engagement, but Dora does not want to talk of practicalities.

If it were possible for me to love Dora more than ever, I am sure I did. But I felt she was a little impracticable. It damped my new-born ardour, to find that ardour so difficult of communication to her. I made another trial. When she was quite herself again, and was curling Jip's ears, as he lay upon her lap, I became grave, and said:
'My own! May I mention something?'
'Oh, please don't be practical!' said Dora, coaxingly. 'Because it frightens me so!'
'Sweetheart!' I returned; 'there is nothing to alarm you in all this. I want you to think of it quite differently. I want to make it nerve you, and inspire you, Dora!'
'Oh, but that's so shocking!' cried Dora.
'My love, no. Perseverance and strength of character will enable us to bear much worse things.' 'But I haven't got any strength at all,' said Dora, shaking her curls. 'Have I, Jip? Oh, do kiss Jip, and be agreeable!'
It was impossible to resist kissing Jip, when she held him up to me for that purpose, putting her own bright, rosy little mouth into kissing form, as she directed the operation, which she insisted should be performed symmetrically, on the centre of his nose. I did as she bade me—rewarding myself afterwards for my obedience—and she charmed me out of my graver character for I don't know how long.

David suggests Dora might learn to do accounts or read a cookery book, but the suggestion makes her faint.

What is the reader to make of this? I am deeply annoyed by Dora’s hopeless helplessness, but as I read the rest of the novel I saw that this was not an affectation but the genuine extent of her abilities. Her most useful ever act is to hold David’s pencil case as he makes notes.

Dickens isn’t writing a satire about the uselessness of contemporary ideas of middle-class femininity. Dora does not fritter her time away in ladylike accomplishments like art or visiting, but plays with the dog and plays her guitar and amuses herself by playing with David’s hair as he studies. She is utterly child like.

Indeed, she asks David to call her his ‘child-wife’ which just squicks me but does encapsulate their relationship. It seems to me that although she is characterised as plump and pretty and slightly sexual (with the rosy lips in pouting form), she is mentally about eight. She certainly is not capable of meaningful consent and their entire relationship disturbs me.

Why would David, an otherwise sympathetic character, have this weird relationship? It makes sense in terms of his personal history – his mother was a child-wife to the terrible Murdstone, and his favourite teacher is a full forty years older than his wife. And, of course, Dickens himself had a mistress 28 years his junior.

Anyway, the whole thing ends happily (for David anyway) when Dora dies from an illness brought on by a miscarriage and David then marries the more adult Agnes. BTW: Jip expires at the same time as Dora, which I find hard to believe even the Victorians found pathetic rather than bathetic.

*David Copperfield* was the first novel Freud gave to his fiancé while courting – and I can see why. It is a semi-autobiographical novel that cries out for the author to receive a hefty dose of counselling.

The moronic member for Hughes, Craig Kelly, gave a speech in which he stated that there should be no funding for research that does not either find a cure for a disease, 'improve our prosperity' or 'improve our lifestyles'. Basically, he wants universities to be patent-making centres for engineering and medicine. Maybe business studies as well. This is, however, the exact opposite of a university.

He spent quite a bit of time listing ARC research and laughing at it. He seems to have not grasped that these grants are incredibly competitive and this research is at international levels.

'A cool $150,000 went into a study of the impact of locally mined silver to make coins in Athens between the years 550 BC and 480 BC.'

Kelly found this self-evidently funny. I, on the other hand, am impressed that someone is doing what universities are meant to do - ie. expanding the pool of human knowledge.

'In another example, a cool $200,000 went to determine what young Australians are learning about sex, love and relationships from the popular media. I would suggest that these are not the type of funding projects that the government should be funding.'

I would suggest that even under his limited and misguided rubric, this would be extremely helpful and likely to 'improve our lifestyles'.

'Under the previous Labor government $253,000 of taxpayers’ money also went to study archaeology in the Central Caucuses. And $444,000 of taxpayers’ money was spent to study a history of advertising industry practices in Australia between 1959 and 1989. Isn’t that the type of study that would be better funded by the advertising industry than by taxpayers?'

In short, no. Any 'research' undertaken by the industry itself would be a hagiography. Serious research would involve criticism of the industry - probably substantial criticism - and is never going to be undertaken by anyone who is not from academia. And again, even under his stupid idea of just funding what is immediately applicable, I can see *huge* popular applications for this knowledge. If you could write a book which talked about, for instance, how women are held up to ridiculous beauty standards, then someone could translate that research into a teaching program which would be invaluable in schools.

Is this man deliberately obtuse or really this pig ignorant? Can he not see that he is basically saying that we should redefine what a university is to mean a TAFE and we should give up on being a country which in any way values education, research or learning.

Instead of just fangirling about Tennyson I should write a proper post about my life. (Anyway, poor Tennyson was subject to enough fannish stalking, requests for autographs and celebrity photography during his life. Did you know Lewis Carroll took a photo of him?)

Anyway, since the slash gathering at my house last week I have been busy being sick. I wish I could have spent more time with Special_Trille at the gathering but I was overwhelmed with a terrible fever and exhaustion. I actually tried to lie down on the ground to rest but the kids just jumped on me. This was followed by a putrid sore throat and I took all my days off work and slept instead. My poor children have heard a constant refrain of ‘No, Mummy can’t read, Mummy can’t tell stories, Mummy can’t push the swing, Mummy is too sick’.

I still feel very tired and distant from everything in my life. I think it is because I just want to rest but the only time I can see where I might be able to rest is – 2016 when Ruby starts school full time. Until then I just have to soldier on, and it’s only a few years, and really the best years of my life in a way, but I just feel so tired and run down and there is no prospect of a time when I will not be running full sprint from my part-time work where I am never fully committed to my kids who resent me not being there all the time, while squeezing in what housework I can, while hardly ever getting to see my friends, and feeling guilty about not managing it all more gracefully.

So that’s basically what I’ve been doing with my life – feeling tired, being tired, finding 20 minute windows to nap in, not being well, not seeing any way out.

This is my 2000th post on LJ. I feel I should have something profound to say to the few people left in this once bustling room….

What I’ve got are some dot points:

· Four more years of Tony Abbott. That vile, racist, climate change denying, misogynist, religious zealot. And probably more than four years as Labor appear to have learned nothing about either policy or leadership and seem to be continuing with their policy of shooting themselves in both feet alternately.
Abbott has announced his cabinet which consists of…. drum roll… nineteen men and a token woman, all looking quite white. Plus he has decided that for the first time since the 1930s there is no need for a Minister for Science. If he had one of those he might have to listen to people talking about global warming.
· Pearl hads an edudance concert on Wednesday. She did the Stray Cat Strut.
· Ruby has her paediatric review next month and I believe the doctor will be astonished that a girl who was not walking in March is now very nearly running. It’s certainly a very quick walk, but I believe that technically both feet must leave the ground at the same time for it to be a running gait? Is that why elephants can’t ‘run’ but merely charge?
· I love Ruby’s excellent vocabulary. She told me she was ‘astonished’ that I would not carry her and ‘baffled’ about why her sister would sit on the chair which Ruby usually claims.
· Pearl wrote the following sentence: ‘Today I am happy becos I see [Danielle].’ She had drawn a picture of two little girls together when she got to the hard to spell out ‘Danielle’ part.
· On the less bright side, Pearl continues to find it very hard to not scream and shout over the tiniest thing going wrong. I experimented with a system of rewards but had to stop because Pearl did not get a single reward in the space of a week, whereas Ruby got them almost every day. More often than me in fact. I think a lot has to do with innate temperament.
· *Crusoe* is still fabulous.
· I have been rewatching the *Back to the Future* trilogy in which 2015 is the unimaginably distant future.
· I have been doing a lot of craft.
· My children have been sleeping *incredibly badly*.

The proposed Papua New Guinea ‘solution’ to refugees is so horrible that I can’t express my shame. I don’t understand why Rudd doesn’t just propose withdrawing from the United Nations Convention rather than circumventing it in this ill-spirited way. For the benefit of non-Australians, a random distinction has been drawn regarding the method by which refugees approach Australia and anyone coming in a boat will never be allowed on-shore. They are to be processed in PNG, if their status cannot be decided they will be held indefinitely in camps which are so bad that there are routinely riots, self-mutilations and suicides, and if they are found to be refugees they will then live in PNG.

And to add insult to injury, this major policy was obviously in development for years and yet somehow Rudd gets to claim the ‘benefit’ of it whereas under Gillard the media coverage was all about her personality, physical appearance and the internal jockeyings of the Labor party.

Absolutely the only ray of sunshine I can see is that very few other nations will be able to follow in our footsteps – only island nations like Japan, New Zealand, I guess the United Kingdom will be able to ‘protect their borders’ in this way.

There are a lot of scare quotes in this rant but the right dominate the debate to such an extent that this is the way that it is framed.

The lead up to our own census reminds me of the release of the 1911 census data in the UK. It's available online - so great.

The 1911 census was the one the suffragists and suffragettes wanted to boycott - no vote, no census!

The census boycott was an easy one for people to join in on, they didn't have o risk imprisonment. I've just been reading about the suffragette movement and thinking how strange life must have been in London in the 1910s (and also how completely the neo-terrorism of it has been blanked out of the historical record).

Things that were happening - the suffragettes were told to 'be patient' by the PM and then went into all out war. It was not a good idea to say this to a woman who had been campaigning for the vote since the 1870s.

There were mass marches attended by thousands and when this didn't work a campaign of violence which by luck did not include any deaths. There were window breakings (but no one seriously injured by the flying glass), fire bombings of postal boxes (which caused injuries to several mailmen), and a lot of arson attacks. One of these lead to prosecution when a housekeeper heard them enter and came downstairs - they had thought the house was empty so it was only because the woman woke up that they avoided accidentally killing her.

There were strings of arson attacks, including burning down Lloyd George. There were a lot of acid attacks, mostly burning 'Votes for women' into the grass at male-only locations like golf courses. After Rockeby's Venus at the National Gallery was slashed women were not allowed to enter some museums and art galleries. Women were not allowed to attend political meetings.

There were literally hundreds of women in jail, many undertaking hunger strikes. The Cat and Mouse Act was regarded, even by opponents of women's suffrage, as a particularly nasty piece of legislation as it was designed to prevent women from dying while in jail so as to not embarrass the Government.

The leaders of the WPSU were forced into exile and there were escapees from the Cat and Mouse Act who were literally on the run. The Government used servaillance photos of notorious suffragettes, taken covertly and circulated to authorities as a security measure (the first time this was done in the UK).

So, basically, it must have seemed like London was under siege (or the suffragettes were). It's interesting that this is not really remembered while other terrorist campaigns (like the Irish movement in the 1970s and 80s) are acknowledged as such. (Another note of similarity: like the Irish, the women were on hunger strike because they demanded that they be recognised as political prisoners).

I approve of the move to put cigarettes in plain packaging - I see it is based on some evidence that this will be a useful public health measure.

The campaign against this move does not, however, receive the EMMA seal of approval.

What is sexist about this advertising?

Why is it that it must be framed as a nanny state issue? It's really about mollycoddling. Dare I raise the phrase pussy whipped?

What all these ideas have in common is that it is unnatural and disorderly and just plain wrong for women to be telling people (men) how to live their lives.

Who states that no woman is his literary equal. He especially singles out Austen, criticising her 'sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world'.

He said: 'I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me.'

My first response is: tee hee, I know artists have to have rock solid egos but are you kidding? Without even venturing into the twentieth century, better than Austen? Charlotte Bronte? Emily Bronte? Elizabeth Gaskell? George Eliot? Sapho? A woman who suggested that all men - from Dickens to Heinlein - were also-rans would be laughed out of the room.

My more considered response is: I would suggest that women do often (though not always) write about matters that are different to those chosen by men. These are not inferior. To paraphrase Virginia Woolf (another author Naipul claims to be superior to) writing about war is somehow regarded as lofty, large scale and important, while writing about the feelings of women in a drawing room is hermetically sealed and unimportant.

And my final thought is: I haven't read Naipul and, after this, am not likely to. But I'd suggest that however good he might consider his own writing, he clearly sucks at reading if he thinks of Austen as sentimental. Austen is a woman who started a novel with this line: 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.' Not what I'd call sentimental.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/02/vs-naipaul-jane-austen-women-writers?CMP=twt_gu

So, whoops, I managed to put my foot in my mouth the other day.

I went to an upmarket park near us, very nice but always full of women who irritate me enormously. Last time I went I overheard a woman bitching that her husband had cut back on her annual two week holiday on her own. Instead of going to New York she was just going to Bali. And, OK, Bali is a big step down from North America but, seriously, an annual holiday *by herself*?

Anyway, this time I overheard a woman complaining about missing out on the baby bonus which 'ridiculously' is not available for those earning over $150,000 a year.

So the next day I met up with the women in my mothers group and one of them was complaining about how hard it is to make ends meet. Oh, how I am down with that.

To cheer them up I told them about the out-of-touch women who considered $150,000 to be struggling. And, of course, you can guess what happened next. She had to confess, shame-facedly, that she didn't get the baby bonus for her latest child because they earn over the cut off. Cue embarrassment all round.

Since then, I randomly happened on a blog article on what middle class income is: http://mattcowgill.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/what-is-the-typical-australians-income/

Have a guess.

( Read more... )

I have to declare that I am a grudge-holding, schadenfreude-ing meanie. I dwell on hurts that politicians have done me; I rejoice when harm comes to them; and I am constantly surprised that others do not.

For instance, during the debacle of the American election in 2000 I thought - not to worry, people will remember this blatant theft of the election. Even those who voted to the Republicans in good faith will not. They have made themselves unelectable. And, OK, then there was September 11 but I was still genuinely surprised that he was re-elected.

For instance, when Howard introduced the GST after saying he 'never ever' would, I was surprised that he was re-elected. I don't know about the rest of Australia but I still resent this taxation as impacting disproportionately on the poor.

The Australian Democrats had the balance of power on the GST issue. They had campaigned wishy-washily on the issue but had made a stand where they said there would definitely be no GST on books. Meg Lees, that pathetic Liberal wannabe leader, caved and in return for no concessions at all allowed the passing of GST on books. Books in Australia are already madly expensive in comparison with the rest of the world and literally every time I have bought a book since then I have thought to myself how it is because of the Democrats that it cost 10% more. I will never stop hating them.

It was with enormous pleasure that I watched the Democrats implode after the GST. It was their last hurrah as the electorate turned against them and they fell apart. The week when they had successive turns at being the leaders was hysterical. They are gone baby gone as a force in Australian politics and I take vindictive pleasure in it.

I seem to be much nastier than other people. I seem to hold grudges against politicians much longer. I will never forgive Howard for the children overboard lie that he used to win the election - It was obviously a lie and it was obviously the most mean-spirited, racist thing he could think of. Even if he had been a saint in every other respect (which he was not), I could never think of him without wanting to spit again.

And yet people vote for these buffoons. (I cast no aspersions of my friends, but people do. They keep getting elected.)

Do people truly not remember events of only a few years passing? I mean, Ruby at six months forgets about things pretty instantly, but Pearl at three years can recall events from a few months ago. So are half the population closer in mental abilities to a six month old than to a toddler? Do they lack object permanence?

Or do they not care as long as their side wins? But then, who could not care about an election being stolen, for instance? It undermines the entire concept of being in a democracy. Likewise bald-faced electoral lies - one expects a certain degree of backflipping after a side win elections but inventing the concept of 'non core promises' makes it impossible for the electorate to make informed choices in the future.

Or, perhaps, are they kinder and more forgiving people than me?