A Red Dirt Princess

We all know by now that consistency is something I struggle with

Hello, thought I would pop in again. I get that when it comes to blogging consistency is key but what can I say it’s not one of my strong points and now Ziva let’s us sleep until 6:30am I am enjoying the time that I planned to be posting, sleeping. To be honest it’s pretty awesome. 

So much has happened, I can barely stand to cover it in one post. But with the help of the wonderful dot point I will try! 

* I quit my job. I put on my big girl panties, went for a coffee with my Big Boss and told him I was leaving to go back to uni. Which leads me to…

* I am going back to uni, it may seem like a snap decision, but it had been brewing for a while, but as I like to remind my younger brothers/cousins, if you put it on the internet anyone can read it. So I waited until it was completely set in stone to make it known. I spent today at orientation and so it’s pretty set! I will be doing my Diploma of Education in Senior Years English (any tips would be so appreciated) and am equal parts really nervous and really excited. More so when one of my lecturer set one of my favourite TED talks as a learning resource. 

* I am not completely quitting my job. I was not quit ready to leave the NFP world completely and would miss my fundraisers way too much, so when my work offered me a casual contract I gladly excepted. I love the ladies I work with and feel so lucky to be able to keep at least one foot in the game. Now I just have to learn how to disengage when I leave the office. 

*I discovered pinterest and a new love of my life emerged. Sorry tumblr, pictures are just so much fun!

*I also got engaged. Because a career change isn’t enough major news. The boy surprised me on our four year anniversary with a stunning ring. We were up near Maleny and had the most perfect long weekend.  The wedding will be after I graduate (I’m not that crazy, to do a wedding and a degree at the same time). But I am having fun looking at reception venues, and pretty gowns. It’s light relief from work/study!

And then there are the other fun things, like parents visiting, birthdays work events, reading, discovering the joys of foxtel (the boy got it for the olympic but I find Supernanny and Toddlers and Tiaras to be a fascinating study on human behaviour!) it’s been a busy time. 

So that was a long fill in post, even with the use of dot points. Hopefully I will be better at posting but I don’t want to get my hopes up.  We’ll have to wait and see…

I feel so guilty…

I didn’t post part two of my international women’s day post. I am sorry- but here it is…

Okay, I promised I would follow up and now I am- where is it harder to be a woman, in the country or the city.  This is a not a simple question to answer. I wish I could just go, it’s so much better to be a women in the city/country/airplane between the two. But it’s not.  And part of it is because men are so different in the city and the country.  

I will preface this by saying I am going to be making some sweeping generalisations in this post, I know they aren’t necessarily true but in my experience, in my opinion they have been.  So let’s begin…

Sweeping generalisation #1: Women are more confident in the city. And it comes down to the nature of their lifestyle. In the country, much of the work is physical. You need brute strength to do a lot of the work and therefore, strength and to a lesser extent fitness are prized values. Women due to the lack of testosterone and size will never be as strong as men.  Or I have never met one. Before you arc up and say some of the strongest, fittest people I know are women, I am not talking about the strength and fitness obtained from hours at the gym in your Lorna Jane. I am talking 15 hour days, literally wrestling 500 kilo cattle, running up and down rocky hills in 38 degree Celsius heat. Moving a ton a cattle feed in a morning before morning tea, with your bare hands. It’s brutal.  Both the men and the women in the area are aware that women find it harder to do the work, aren’t as productive in the cattle yards.  The men puff up their ego, perceive themselves as more useful and the women sometime doubt their worth in that world, lowering their confidence. This isn’t overt, but it just take a tiny little self- doubt, and a tiny little bit of ego boost to develop inequality between men and women. 

 I still recall being laughed at because my slender shoulders meant I couldn’t lift yard panels- I kept slipping through the gap in the rails. I was promptly told to go put the kettle on, the men would finish up.  A little reminiscent of the 1950’s - yes. But also practical, and I didn’t particularly want to be scrapping my shoulders and hurting my back lifting heavy yard panels, so it was a kind of a win.  The difference lies in the fact the I was back helping out during a holiday, I wasn’t trying to make a career in the area.  I knew I was good at other things and my confidence was left for the most part undaunted. This being said, if I am there for a longer period of time, I start to feel it. I am not as good as the people who can do the physical work. I am not as good as the men.

In the city, fitness and strength is about how good you look in a pair of tight jeans more than how capable you are at your job. Women and men have the same base on which to build their career (for the most part, I am not going to argue about discrepancies in pay here). Women are more likely to believe the adage they can do anything, they can have it all and enjoy the confidence that brings.  

More sweeping generalisations to come…

Happy International Women’s Day… for yesterday

Happy International Women’s Day folks. I know I am a day late, but I it’s something I really wanted to write about. And seriously write about because I have been lucky enough to live in two really different places in Australia, both with different attitude to women and neither of them deliver equality in the sexes. 

I saw a lot of people yesterday ask whether we still need words like feminist and whether international women’s day was still relevant or more of a token celebration in Australia (like St Patrick’s Day). Lots of commentators replied with stats like “Women do 66% of the worlds labour, only hold 10% of the worlds wealth and 1% of the worlds property.” while relevant I think it can be simplified even more. When the man of the house (or MOH as he will be know for the rest of this post) is home alone he feels comfortable leaving the front door not only unlocked but wide open. I do not. When the MOH takes the dog for a walk by himself, he feels comfortable taking our normal route through a little bit of bushland. I do not. When the MOH gets a cab home late at night, he feels comfortable just hoping in and giving the man his address. I have to get in the cab get a gf to write down the cabs ID number and time of departure, I then call the MOH and let him know I am in a cab, where I am leaving from and when I expect to get home, when I get home I call my gf and let her know I am home safe. It’s exhausting but it make me feel, well not safe, but more confident that if I am raped and murdered after a dinner out, they will be able to find my body and someone will actually know I was missing. So people call me overly cautious, but that’s not the point, the point is that of two Australian citizens, of around the same age, economic status, equally educated, one feels less safe because of their gender. And after a conversation at a recent dinner party, it seems to be a common theme from the young women attending, we are sometimes concerned for our physical well being and change our behaviour because of it . I just have to warn everyone out there, don’t sneak up behind any of my friends after dark, they have their house keys sticking out between their fingers and will poke your eye out. 

And to the men who don’t understand why, let me tell you a tiny little tale. As a 20 year old I was out at a club, and a young man of similar age approached me and started doing the drunken, unimpressive, “It’s getting late and I still haven’t found someone to go home with me yet” chat. I politely shut him down with a “I have a boyfriend, sorry”  and went to walk away. This boy (he couldn’t have been older than 20) grabbed my upper arm, leaned in closer and in a sour, beer scented breath slurred “Where is he now” and fear shot through me. Even though he was wasted and young, he was completely able to physically stop me from leaving, and it scared the shit out of me. I quickly ignored him, pushed him a little and immediately sort out my friends (safety in numbers). To his credit he let go of my arm, and went back to his mate to drink another beer and no doubt find another target for his drunken advances.  I don’t think this boy was a rapist, criminal, or bad person. He was a typical boy, on a typical night out, and this is were the problem lies, if a “typical” drunken boy thinks it’s okay to grab a woman’s arm, and doesn’t understand how that makes her feel, how that loss of freedom makes her feel even for a split second, how are we going to work towards women feeling safer in our society. 

And that’s why I think international women’s day is so important, it gives the women we know and love the chance to share with the men how we can keep working for a more equal society, even in the most basic forms. It brings these issues into the light. 

Now I know equality is so much more than feeling safe, but that is all I have time for this morning, I have to get ready for work and I am so blessed I am able to work. So I shouldn’t be late. 

Oh ps. I know I didn’t get a chance to address equality in rural and metropolitan areas, will get to that later, so watch this space

Energy of an evening? What an uncommon sensation

I know, I am aware, my posts have been patchy at best, but I swear there is a totally legit reason for that. You see tension levels at my current place of employment are at all time highs. I mean they could rival tensions in the Biggest Loser House (but thankfully there are no uncomfortable pseudo romances happening at work- like Hamish and Michelle). 

Now I am not going to comment on why there are tensions or place blame or bitch ( I know so boring!) but I will say having that negative, who can you trust, what’s happening, what do people actually mean vibes whizzing around the workplace suck the energy out of you like nobodies business. Some days I was coming home so exhuasted I didn’t even want to play with the puppy. I mean god, you’ve seen enough photos of her to know I am crazy about my dog, life is better with her, and so when I don’t have energy for her something is wrong . Furthermore I have seen people doing much longer days on stations, much more physically and sometimes mentally taxing work and yet after a 5am to 6pm day, they are all love nothing more than hanging with their dogs, and more importantly are able to.  So that’s how toxic it is. But today, somehow, I have a little more energy, I am not sure why, possibly because I am caring a little less. 

I have created a little mental list things worth expending energy on and things not worth spending energy on. For example, things I should always have the energy for - speaking at least weekly chat with Mum and hearing how all the animals are going. Things that don’t deserve energy- grammar in text messages, I mean seriously, i am doing this one handed, usually in the 13 seconds between one task and the next, I am not thinking about my yours.

So with my new system I am going to try and keep this more updated- because updating my blog is in the worth the energy, 

So I have been slack

What can I say Feb has turn out to be a busy month- not quite as busy as the end of Jan, but I am learning to appreciate these mornings when I get up with the Zivafish (nickname given to puppy Ziva by me, and my Mum, who has been staying since the end of Jan) (well on and off, Mum and Dad stay for a couple of days, then they go to say Tamworth for a couple of days and buy half a horse)(that is a true story). 

Anyway I would feel guilty if someone read my blog but let’s face it, we all (and by we I mean me and the other side to my complex personality) that I am the only one reading and the writing of this blog is more a cathartic way to ensure I am writing something, even if it is just my feelings towards Bunnings. Although I should be careful, one day a teenage daughter of mine (who for the record I don’t have) might google me, find this, and use it against me for 5 or so years. Those are the breaks of the Y generation who are just content with keeping a diary, we have to keep it online so strangers in 10 different countries can read it. 

Anyway the lack of updating is probably lucky, I would just bore the world with hundred of photos of the cutest puppy that ever lived. Hell I might still do that because with a face like Ziva’s it needs to be shared. constantly. 

Other than taking photos of Ziva on my new Iphone, I have discover the goodreads website www.goodreads.com and fallen almost in love with it as I have my Iphone (currently there are 27 books on my two read list- I want to try  an read at least fifty in 2012- I mean in the world is going to end in February I want to experience some of the great books and read everything Bec Sparrow has ever written because that women can make me laugh like nobodies business). Which leads me to point 2. I kind of really want a kindle- partly because 27 books takes up a lot of space and I don’t really have the room and partly because then I can download trashy trashy chick lit (like twilight- I know I have ranted and ranted in the past about how those books will rot you brain and give you as much insight into a modern relationship as your Mum giving you a Ken doll and saying her you go deary, this is what a man is like {for the record my Mum did not do that}) Anyway I can download the trashy chick lit and read it in public places without feeling ashamed or ruining my rep as the girl who reads serious books (seriously due to my previously read books goodreads through my favourite genre was the classics!) But my main caveat (yeah you learn how to use words from reading the classics, if I didn’t read the classics I would think a Caveat was what Matt Preston wore around his neck) is that I rarely by new books, I am a huge fan of Op Shops and borrowing/lending books. The highest form of compliment to the author is if you pass that book on. On a Kindle you have to buy new and you can’t say “here, read this is awesome” to you Mum knowing full well you will never get that book back- because you actually mind if it takes 12 months for your kindle to be returned. And I know in a perfect world we would all have kindles and email the files to each other, but that’s no the same level of love, nor is it practical. But I want one- did you know you can download anything published prior to 1923 for free? I know we’re back to the classics. 

So I have updated, shared useless rambling, but it feels good to type something other than website content and sponsorship docs. 

Weekend Warrior thy name is Megan!

I always wondered what was the draw to Bunnings. When I was a kid and we made the annual trip to the big smoke (aka Darwin), Mum and Dad used to walk around Bunnings for hours and hours and my brothers and I would trail after them through the plants and the pots, the tools and the hardware. And since then, I have never had the desire to return to a giant warehouse and look at 16 million versions of a hammer. 

Until we bought our little house, with its very little backyard, Bunnings has become an amazing warehouse where dreams are made. Saturday morning is made for wandering the isles and comparing the virtues of the 15 metre hose to the 13 metre house. And I mean there is even a sausage sizzle! No shoe store I have ever been to has offered a sausage sizzle! 

So after several trips to Bunnings, which pretty much take all more, we have the start of a beautiful little courtyard complete with pink coloured Cordylines starting to grow up the back fence, lush Sir Walter turf (whatever retired cricket player that was sprucing its virtues will be very proud) and fragrant feature plants in terracotta feature pots. I mean we even have a brand new outdoor setting (put together last night by the man of the house in the drizzle- you can’t get more manly than that right?)

And now we have this beautiful space, designed by us, created by us (that’s right I pulled up pavers and planted pot plants) the new little home feels more like ours. It feels like home and it is the first dwelling in Brisbane that has ever given me that relaxed feeling in my stomach when I walk through the front door. Like I said Bunning- the amazing warehouse where dreams are made!