Friday – this week I am grateful for …

Today is Friday again. Here are my top five for this week.

One

Finally ditching Telstra and setting up fancy answering machine.

I love a good answering machine. I used to have one in my flat in Elizabeth Bay that played Arrival of the Queen of Sheba when anyone phoned! I thought that was hilarious. I was 18.

Recently I have been less than impressed with the rising charges by our nation’s largest teleco and then I received yet another missive from ‘marketing’ telling me they were charging me more for exactly the same service and then offering me more stuff I don’t use for another huge amount per month. So I blew them off. I churned over to our internet provider who do not charge a flag fall – a charge for the privilege of accessing the network you already pay to access! I spoke to no-one, I just filled in their simple electronic form, they did everything and SMS’ed me when it was finalised – brilliant.

I then, finally, pressed the record button and recorded a personalised greeting from the four of us – anyone who would like to phone the baby; feel free to leave him a message if he’s busy.

Two

Long Service Leave

The public service is a wonderful thing. It provides much needed support to the community, makes thing run and delivers what they call ‘public value’. I’ve been delivering public value for more than 7 years now.

After seven years of toil and suffering (believe me being a woman in the Roads and Traffic Authority of NSW had some suffering attached) the public service give you a little gift of paid leave called Long Service; an entitlement which is transferable and thus which travels around if you do, it followed me to Canberra. Long Service Leave is like a sabbatical but with better pay. The time I have accrued is just enough to cover me through to the Christmas week which is great. It means we won’t starve and I can be home a little bit longer with my gorgeous boy.

Three

Bookclub

Last night was the first book club meeting. I tried hard to be nice and not say anything inflammatory – I only knew two of the thirteen people. As they say on Twitter #FAIL

I immediately set the cat among the pigeons by declaring my affections for what they were calling ‘the French book’ which turned out to be Atomised by Michel Houellebecq. They all, to a person hated it. I loved that book. In fact I have loved everything of his I have read – maybe blackness in literature is my thing, maybe I just love French existentialists. After that stunning opening, I also defending idle parenting and twitter. No fans for those either. I made some comments about the characterisation of This Is How and the author M.J Hyland’s style. They while we watched an incredibly pretentious interview with her, I looked her up on Twitter (further endearing me to them by whipping out my iphone.)

Long and the short, I am grateful for book club, because I remembered, thanks to them, that not everyone agrees with me. The notions I accept as reasonable, and some of my still firming parenting views, are a bit ‘radical’ it seems for some people. It is good to remember this for when I am forced to deal with classroom teachers and other members of the education establishment – and other parents who may be slightly put off by idle and free range parenting.

Four

Cook Islands Holiday

It is also Benedict’s first birthday on the 27 December (lucky lucky boy). Robert and I have not been on holidays since 2008. I have in fact only been on holidays properly once in the past 10 years. We went for one week to Tasmania and it was lovely but we haven’t been anywhere for more than a few days since – and an awful lot has happened.

We are going with Benedict to the Cook Islands for a week over Christmas. I am so excited I can hardly breathe.

Five

White jacket and new jeans

I don’t wear a lot of white, the odd linen shirt when it is bloody hot and singlet top here and there. However, when I was pregnant my lovely friend Susan took me shopping in a boutique which stocks Mela Perdie. God how I love that woman’s clothes. I bought a white Chanel style jersey jacket. It is completely fabulous. It’s been sitting in my wardrobe for over twelve months. I haven’t really had to guts to wear much – actually never – it is too white, too nice – but I wore it last night with my new jeans and my ballet flats that Robert bought me. I felt like a million bucks.