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Graduating With Your Child
Thank you to Em Rusciano for the inspiration for this post. See the video on my Facebook page about her being a NEXT LEVEL, FORMAL MUM on 2Day FM. You see, there can be no better prize as a parent than those academic award days when your child’s achievement is unveiled publicly and you can…
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Conquering Fears and Discovering Bush In Australia
I conquered a few long-held fears during my holiday last week with the old man – the fear of whether we can actually spend time alone together without me wanting to kill him, because I’m aware that I won’t be able to use the PMT card as a defence in our retirement, as well as…
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Taking The Middle-Aged Man On Holiday
Mini breaks are what you do in middle age when the kids get too cool to come away with you (and you can’t afford to take them, anyway), and the idea of a long holiday with your other half is too daunting. They should be long enough to give you a break from the pressures…
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What Do Middle-Aged Adults Do On Rainy Days?
Come to Sydney, they said, the climate’s great, they said. Most of the time. Since 2017 began – and remember we’re in summer here – the temperature has ranged between a pizza oven and cardie weather, with little variation in between. And then came the rain; a deluge that has had the gall to wash away the…
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Those Embarrassing, Inane Conversations Of Middle Age
I’m not sure when the old man and I silently agreed that inane middle-aged conversation was acceptable now. It was probably another one of those telepathic, marital communications that we couldn’t verbalise due to the shame, but one day it was suddenly okay to talk about gibberish – about stuff like the weather or what…
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I Blame Trump For My Anxiety
It’s not cold here in Sydney today, thankfully, because up until the last week or so it felt like it had been thirty-fucking seven degrees since 2016. But metaphorically it feels cold, that is since Trump entered the building, threw his toys out of the pram and began to shake up the foundations of diplomacy…
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Practicing Simplicity In Middle Age
There is a “family and lifestyle” blog called Practicing Simplicity, by Jodi Wilson. It offers its readers a stunning vista of photographs and tales of motherhood with affiliated yoga, cooking and lifestyle tips. I love the name: Practicing Simplicity. Scrolling through the site, there is an aura of calm that bounces off each photo captured…
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Are Separate Bedrooms The Beginning Of The End?
So the old man has finally committed to the purchase of a bed for his study. Not, as I originally suspected, for those afternoon naps we all know he has when he pretends to be working, but somewhere to migrate to in the early hours of the morning when the snoring Olympics begin, of which…
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Broken People
Wow! ‘Manchester By The Sea’. It’s unlike me to enthuse about movies on this site. Truth be told, it’s getting much harder to walk away from a movie and feel truly motivated these days, (Hidden Figures is an exception), so exhausted am I by the blatant ageism, objectification and sexism that Hollywood continues to get…
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When Equality Leads To Divorce
I know I’m a feminist, nevertheless I’ve decided to impeach my house husband for misconduct in the area of the family food shop. He’s simply not up to the job. Albeit he has done some fine work in terms of a reduction in cost to our weekly food bill, happiness isn’t just about money and…
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Tomorrow Is Another Day for People With ADHD
So much negativity surrounds people with ADHD and that judgement can be paramount to their poor self-esteem. But something no-one can take away from the ‘differences’ in their mindset is their relentless enthusiasm for life, when they aren’t reeled in by the constraints of a society that is at odds with their strengths and personality…
LOUISA SIMMONDS 