Where have you BEEN?

Yes, I know I've been neglectful.

It's all the fault of our esteemed leader.

Kev1n Ru*d, god bless his soul, has introduced legislation into federal parliament to recognise same sex relationships.

That's good.

BUT, it means that as of mid next year, I'm going to lose my single parents' pension. Because, you know, I'll suddenly be in a relationship.*

This gives me a problem: how to earn money while keeping the kids out of childcare.

I went back to the life coach I saw a couple of years ago when I was feeling rudderless because we weren't getting pregnant (Her name is Geraldine Barkworth and if you're feeling somewhat lacking in direction yourself I highly recommend her. She practices by phone so don't worry if you're not located in north east NSW).

We came up with a business idea. I'm excited, again. I haven't felt excited about working for - well, a very long time. So now, after the kids go to bed, I spend my evenings writing a business plan. And building a website. And musing over business names.

I don't know if I can look after twins, set up a new business, and blog.

*Federal recognition of the relationship, while good, is different to state recognition. It's the state laws that govern who is considered a parent. So although I will be legally partnered, my children will still only have one parent. So we'll have to keep working on our video campaign.

Equal rights for us IV

Here's my mum!

Equal rights for us III

You can find the others on this blog by clicking on the 'qld law reform campaign' label to the right

Who's the real mum?

My current project is a series of interviews on people's experience of legislation that discriminates against gays and lesbians (I know I'm meant to write glbti there but I'm a bit unreconstructed and can't do that without feeling silly). It's part of a campaign that will include sending them to Queensland MPs, and I know our honourable elected representatives will see them and think, 'why yes! I really must change those archaic laws!'

Here's the first.

The p00fter-basher within

Granny & babies

Last night I did this survey on the experience of gay and lesbian parents. Ruth McNair is doing it through the Bouverie Centre in Melbourne, so it's all very proper.

Anyway it's started me thinking about internalised homophobia all day, specifically mine, and how it affects my parenting.

As a parent, I am so much more out than I ever was before. I am pretty out - I certainly don't choose to be closeted - but I know that just walking along the street, people don't assume I'm a dyke.

I knew I would have to become more out once the babies came, but I didn't really get what that would be like. Twins get a lot of attention, and when Lovergirl and I are out wearing one baby each, someone always says, 'What beautiful babies - whose are they?' So, we say, 'Ours'.

This has always been fine - as in, we haven't had any negative responses - although often people take a second to really get what that means. I can see realisation flit across their faces. 'Huh? Umm? OOHHHH!' Then they will quickly move on to talking about something else about the babies, 'Are they eating solids yet?'

Lovergirl said, 'I feel really exposed.'

Another common interaction, when I am out by myself with Lucky & Junior, goes,
Total stranger (usually mature woman): 'What beautiful children! Is your husband Asian?'
Me (in a warm friendly tone): 'No, my partner is a woman and she's Anglo. The donor is Chinese though.'
Total stranger: 'Ah..'

Sometimes I dodge the pronoun. More people say 'partner' now, so it's easier to do this without actually lying. But I know I'm walking away from the conversation leaving the impression that I'm straight.

I know that, having brought children into my family, I have a responsibility to model being proud of who we are. I want to get really confident with outing myself so that by the time the children can understand, they will see that it's no big deal and that we think our family is the best family to be in.

I'm out at work, at mothers' groups, to all my family - anyone I've met more than once, really. What's new is this constant outing to complete strangers. Shop assistants. Old ladies. Random Asian people who admire the babies. Other twin parents stopping us in the street to exchange notes.

When I think about it, what do I fear? I don't really think many people are going to beat up a woman with twin babies in a playground (which is usually where I am). It's more about disapproval. And some weird taboo about not wanting to make people uncomfortable. And people often look uncomfortable, when they ask an innocuous question and unexpectedly are confronted with my sex life.

So, the avoiding the risk of disapproval and discomfort from strangers, or safeguarding my children's self-esteem?

I know this is something my mother also struggles with. She has confessed that sometimes she uses a short form of Lovergirl's name (it contracts to a boy's name) when referring to my partner. My mother is learning the pronoun game. I find it a bit insulting, but also can see why she does it - she is being thrust into the position of having to come out, as well. (What would be the fear for her, I wonder? Being perceived as a failure as a parent, for producing gay children?) We both need to learn to do better quickly, before the kids pick up on it.

I'm going to practice harder.

Who cleans the poo off the nappies in your house?

I'm reading The Post-Baby Conversation: What New Parents Need to Say to Each Other by Alison Osborne. Given the title, I thought it might kickstart some post-baby conversations of our own, but it turns out there's a huge chasm between my lesbian parenting experience and the author's representation of heterosexual parenting. The book is completely heterosexual and completely eye-opening. I mean, is this true? Or is it really out of date?

(Just checking the publication date: Nope, it's 2006)

0sborne says that in her experience, the working partners (i.e. men) come home from work and put their feet up while the mother continues to run around getting dinner on, putting the kids to bed, folding washing and so on. And on weekends the man expects to have the weekend off, because he's worked hard all week, while she continues to take main responsibility for the children. And that the male partners only do jobs around the house if they are specifically asked. And that she has to ask for money for everything (scatter cushions, a pot plant, presents for the kids).

The underlying problem, in her view, is that the men don't see staying home with the children as work. That, like the columnist who caught my attention recently, their impression is that someone needs to be home to keep an eye on the kids, but that as long as you are keeping them away from electrical sockets, it's pretty much all about traipsing around shopping malls and catching up with girlfriends for coffee.

(I can't even have coffee, I'm breastfeeding)

The three main areas of inequality she identifies are childrearing, housework and finances. In both childrearing and housework, all the women interviewed for this book commented how they need to ask their male partners to do everything. 'Honey the baby is crying can you pick her up?' 'Honey could you empty the dishwasher?' and so on.

I'm suspecting that Osborne came up with a thesis and then searched for people to interview who would confirm her hypothesis. Although as I was pondering this, I bumped into someone from my prenatal yoga class and she started talking about exactly this; how her partner comes home from a 'hard day' at work and asks why the house is messy.

What I'm curious about is differences between lesbian and straight relationships. Maybe there aren't so many differences pre-babies - that, regardless of gender, we can be fairly independent in partnerships, livin' our lives, doin' our thing. After babies arrive though, we revert to gender stereotypes for lack of alternative models. Luckily for me, two women reverting to stereotypes means the work gets evenly shared. When we're with the babies, we're both working all the time. It's hard to see how it would be possible otherwise.

Sunday as we were getting ready for the family Easter lunch, I was breastfeeding the babies and Lovergirl disappeared. I could hear her in the bathroom.

'The bugger,' I thought sourly. 'I bet she's putting on makeup. It's alright for some. I never get to put makeup on anymore.'

She emerged, sans makeup.

'What have you been doing?' I ask in a catty fashion.

'I just thought I'd quickly clean the bathroom while I was waiting for you all,' she said.

Oh.

Oh for a steady diet of Oprah and Ricki

In The Australian yesterday (I know, but it's the only broadsheet I can get here in Brisvegas, and sometimes I want to read a real newspaper made of paper), P3t3r Saund3rs railed against parents who 'sit at home watching daytime television' while taxpayers support them.

Daytime television!

There's a man who hasn't spent much time at home alone with two children.

Sorry

I had an Aboriginal 'uncle'.

As a young mother, my grandmother responded to a call at her church to take in indigenous children 'whose families couldn't look after them'. She had five children of her own but thought it was the right thing to do.

I never really thought about it much as a kid. I remember Uncle B trying to find his people, that he knew they were somewhere along the Murray; but he never did find them.

He died, in his early fifties, of 'natural causes' when I was a teenager.

I can't remember ever having tears in my eyes listening to a politician speak before. I feel a part of something huge today.

Outrageous

Today my single parent's pension came through
(I'm only a lesbian for the welfare benefits)

This despite me taking Lovergirl to the interview with Centrel1nk to juggle the babes and ticking 'yes' in all the boxes on all the myriad forms that asked whether I have a partner. Filling out an online Centrel1nk form, I triggered a pop-up 'Same Sex Warning Page' (I kid you not) asking me to double check whether I really intended to indicate that both my partner and I were in fact female. 'If this is correct, please click continue. If not, go back...'

Centrel1nk insists I am single and that they must give me the single parent's pension. Some compensation for the other 57 pieces of federal legislation that discriminate against us financially.

By all means though, if you are outraged by this largesse, feel free to write directly to Kevin Rudd demanding equal recognition for same sex relationships and co-parents.

It's safe to come out now, children

It's not all baby brain around here, I was thinking about the federal election too you know.

And I got moved all the way to the head of the voting queue for being so pregnant!

I did fall asleep during the election party, sometime after J0hn conceded defeat and before Kev1n gave his reportedly dull 'we are the champions' speech.

But for most of the time I had my finger on the pulse.

Does anyone know anything about N1ck Xen0ph0n? Apart from 'Pokies bad, water good'?

We will return to normal viewing in a moment

Two o'clock in the morning and I'm jolted awake again by another dream about the lesbian-mothers-of-wrongfully-born-twins case, my third rude awakening in three nights. In my dream they have been trapped in my childhood laundry since their children were born, which is why they are suing. I suppose that might accurately represent their view on how the situation feels. Tonight - just a few minutes ago - I was the unnamed mother in question, and was just about to be chloroformed.

There's been a lot of internatter about the case, and the bloggers I respect have been much more thoughtful than my initial explosion. The Muriels have been frustrated by how the ignorant hordes have picked up and run with the fact that the parents are lesbians. Over at Larvateus Prodeo there's a long string of mostly sane comments on the issue. Both of them, and a few of the less-hysterical newspaper articles, focus on the fact that this is a simple and rather dull medical negligence case, which happens to be newsworthy because the parents being lesbians taps into people's prejudices about same-sex parents.

So for sensible, thoughtful comment, click on those links and off you go. I want to work out why I am so affected by this, why it wakes me up night after night. It may not be pretty. It's my thoughts and emotions and gut feelings, okay? A proper teenage journal entry. Then I'm going to leave it alone, because really, who am I to comment?

There seem to be four issues that disturb me.

There's the lesbian thing; not in the way the media is beating it up, but that they are lesbians is relevant for me. I've realised that I do expect a higher standard of parenting from lesbians. I'm not sure whether it's gender stereotyping (of course two women are going to be better than a woman and a man) or a natural inclination to believe that one's own family structure is the best, in the same way I would believe that a Christian upbringing was best if I was Christian, or a traditional Greek upbringing if I was Greek. I'm disappointed to realise that lesbian parents are human, get overwhelmed and say they have 'lost their ability to love.' I'm making a judgement, of course, that what is reported in the paper represents less-than-ideal parenting. Maybe once I've had twins for three years I won't feel quite so opinionated.

In the last couple of months, three of the lesbian families in my extended social circle have broken up - two of them quite amicably, one with great acrimony. In all of the cases the (single) child was about three. I suppose I fantasised that, well, we have to put so much work into getting pregnant that it somehow creates a more solid base, more realistic expectations of childrearing and the pressures on a relationship that it creates. Now I wonder whether the difficulty of getting pregnant actually can create a fantasy world, a belief that everything will be wonderful if only we get pregnant.

I thought we were going to demonstrate a brave new world, a model of women-led families that would demonstrate the potential of families for listening, caring, being co-operative, child-focussed and nurturing. All of those derided 'feminine qualities' would lead to a better sort of family and thence to a better society. Gentle, secure, non-bullying boys and confident young women leading the next generation.

God, I should have written a novel! A science fiction one along the lines of 'The Shore of Women'.

That's only the first part. The second aspect that I wonder about is the medical negligence part. Maybe the doctor made a mistake or maybe he didn't, the courts will decide. But I wonder about the expectations we have of superhuman infallibility in doctors. When I make a mistake, a typo gets published in a magazine, or a bunch of trainees goes away with a misremembered statistic from a journal article sloppily cited. But a doctor can never, ever make a mistake. Obviously i don't want doctors making mistakes on me, but isn't some human error inevitable, as long as we have humans doing the job? Perhaps the doctors have brought this on themselves, with centuries of marketing themselves as superior to all other forms of healing. But it seems a bit harsh that someone can have a written document expressing one set of wishes, then articulate a change of plans minutes before they go under anaesthetic, and expect that that will be communicated all the way down to the lab.

I don't know how we would resolve this, practically. If we accept that some fallibility is inevitable, does it pave the way for sloppy work generally? is the only thing that keeps doctors practicing effectively the threat of punishment if they are found out? Yes, in some cases, I'd say. But should the test of a 'reasonable person' (I'm not a lawyer so I'm not exactly sure how this works) be not, 'Would I have made this mistake in this particular circumstance?' but rather 'Would I have the same mistake rate - is this a reasonable rate of error to expect from a competent human?' Obviously this would radically change medicine. Imagine if your doctor said, 'This operation has an eighty percent chance of success and a one percent chance that I will make a mess of it.' I wish I could find out doctors' mistake rates so I could truly make informed decisions. How many times has my ob crushed a baby's head with forceps? How does this compare with other obs? How many incorrect decisions to caesarean section - or an incorrect decision to not? How many people have been paralysed by my anaesthetist's epidurals? The risk, they say, is one in 100,000 - what if all of those ones have been created by my anaesthetist?

Okay, I'm halfway through. I haven't got any answers, only questions.

Next,the idea of wrongful birth offends me deeply. In a concept I've just discovered, again in The Age comment by Sushi Das, I'm 'morally dumbfounded'.

In his new book, The Happiness Hypothesis, psychologist Jonathon Haidt from the University of Virginia argues morals are tied to religion and politics. He explores the idea of "moral dumbfounding" — when people feel strongly that there is something wrong but cannot explain why. He says morality is driven by two things: moral intuition, based on behaviour driven by emotions that evolved before we had language; and moral judgement, which came when we were able to articulate why something was right or wrong.

Moral dumbfounding, Dr Haidt says, comes when moral judgement fails to come up with a convincing explanation for what moral intuition has decided.

So, I 'just know' that the idea of 'wrongful birth' is wrong. Unless, I suppose, I wanted to prosecute a case myself, against my parents? Should a person be able to decide for themselves their birth was wrongful?I won't follow that particular rabbit hole. Back to the point - I'm trying to get my 'moral judgement' to express itself. I wonder how any parents could subject their children to that. It's like that bad Demi Moore movie that asks 'Would you have sex with a man for a million dollars?' Would you tell your child s/he shouldn't exist for $400,000? Being diagnosed as clinically infertile, I understand I'm biased, and prone to the delusion that a child is a blessing. And if I was carrying a child with a significant disability (and maybe I am, we elected not to have amniocentesis, about which I have occasional anxieties), I would want to know and make a decision about whether or not to keep the foetus.

I feel some pressure to support them simply because they are lesbians. That disapproving of bringing a case like this is tantamount to saying 'lesbians shouldn't be parents.'

On the other hand (there's always an 'other hand' when I'm being honest), if someone had specified a maximum of two embryos, and got three, then I might think they had a case...triplets are hard. So go figure. Maybe I'm just inconsistent.

But I can't imagine ever saying 'I've lost the ability to love'. Not over having a healthy child. Maybe if I was captured and tortured, that might turn me off the human race a bit. But maybe that's a bit of misreporting.

But if you didn't want the second (or third) child, why not give it up for adoption? Not necessarily to a straight family, which is what the rednecks are calling for, but to a nice same-sex couple who don't usually have access to adoption? Maybe to a couple of gay boys who don't even have the option of using IVF clinics? Then I suppose you could just sue for the extra inconvenience of having a multiple pregnancy (how much would each street-chuck be worth, I wonder? and the extra tiredness - I could get compensation for all the extra blog entries I was too exhausted to write, not to mention the hours and hours of well-paid consulting I didn't take on. A few more dollars for the extra stretch marks and saggy boobs and you're done.)

'Giving it up for adoption' seems to be positioned as a right wing response, but I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's about adapting to the society as it is, rather than changing society to meet the needs of the people in question.
Then (I'm going to stop in a moment, I promise) there's the price. I think that's a straight-out case of envy on my part. They can't support two kids on $120,000? My god, how are we going to survive? I'm the primary wage earner and Lovergirl is going to be a student finishing her doctorate for the next two years. If they can get $400,000, why can't I? Hmm...maybe I can...

As a few people at larvateus prodeo commented, from a compensation perspective, how would you ever separate out how much of the chaos and overwhelm is due to having one child, and how much is due to there being two? Some twin parents (admittedly not the majority) have told me that after the hell of the first six weeks, they found two actually easier - better at settling themselves at night, and less demanding of attention as they have each other to interact with.

Finally, I think I'm having a straight out illogical mother-bear response. I confessed to Lovergirl, 'I feel like someone is telling our twins they are unwanted.' Said Lovergirl, sensibly, 'But they're not.' They're not unwanted, and in my case at least, twins are definitely not a devastating accident. I feel like I've won the baby lottery! Although all this bile about lesbian parents has been unleashed by the case, I don't think it's new, and I am optimistic that it's changing. Our babies are going to be noisy, and exhausting, and expensive, and put strains on our relationship that I can't even imagine. I am delighted to be having them, and anxious to meet them, and concerned about the state of the planet we are dumping on them. We've cancelled our tickets to Italy, and I've dropped out of film school, and Mum's in Bali this very moment on a holiday Lovergirl and I had organised for ourselves six months ago, before we got pregnant. If it had been a singleton pregnancy, we still would have gone. Life is never going to be the same again. And that's okay.

Slack jawed disbelief

All I can say is, isn't it amazing that intelligent people can get together, spend years thinking about something, establish mutual trust and respect, consult, come up with 97 complex recommendations and have them reduced to more police (and army!), more state control, more punishment and compulsory speculae up children's gen1tals.

For many thoughtful comments on H0ward's plan for indigenous communities start here

betrayed

On the front page of last week's Guardian is a photo of about a hundred refugees clinging to fishing nets in the middle of the sea. Their boat sank halfway between the north coast of Africa and the south coast of Europe. A Maltese fisherman let them hang on to his fishing nets for three days while he towed them in. Fifty seven people 'disappeared' during these three days, said the paper. The fisherman said, 'It was my obligation to help them but I couldn't let them come aboard, these strong men might have overrun the boat'.

What I can't get over is how easy people find it to dehumanise refugees, at the same time remaining insistent that this sort of treament of people who are different only happened 'a long time ago' (i.e. Nazi Germany) or 'in more barbaric cultures' (i.e. female circumcision, Abl violence, African superstition). Our (I mean Western) barbaric treatment is done for a reason, therefore is entirely different.

I was affected by the fisherman being Maltese. I tend to romanticise my father's native country. Despite having been their during a huge rally for the right to unfettered shooting (Malta is responsible for the virtual extinction of many migratory birds that fly from Africa to Europe) during which men marched through the street with guns destroying centuries-old fortifications, despite their entrenched patriarchalism, homophobia and deep Catholic superstition, my concept is of warm, open, friendly, relaxed people who take long lunches and nap in the afternoons, and walk with their families through the warm narrow streets after dark.

We're all lovely to the people who look like us.

Same or different?

Two links from Canada:
Three ads aired in Canada when they were trying to get gay marriages legalised;
And the results of a 2006 metaanalysis of the literature into gay and lesbian parenting.

Interestingly with the latter one, apparently the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada requested this study in response to the legalisation of gay marriages. Once the study was completed, its unexpected (by the Christians) results were suppressed and the gay rights group had to get the report through Freedom of Information.

The ads emphasise the sameness of gay, lesbian and straight marriages. They're clever adwriting. A friend Jill is doing her PhD on something along the lines of 'How gays and lesbians are disappearing.' Her starting point (she's in the early stages) is about how, in an effort to remove discrimination, we spend a lot of time emphasising how identical we are to straight relationships. That all we want is peace and quiet to form the same nuclear families that everyone else does. That of course we don't undermine the institution of marriage.

She argues that actually we are different, and that gay and lesbian relationships are radical, not just more of the same, and do have the potential to reshape society.

I don't know that I'm reshaping society...On a day to day level it feels very similar. There's the toilet to clean, and dinner to cook, my job, her studies, boring work functions to attend as 'the partner', and whose parents to see at Christmas...

I suppose one thing that is deeply different is the absence of a male. I know this seems a simple omission, but when you think that our society is structured around men being in control, having all these women-headed families (headed by women by choice, not by sad blameless single women who can't hold on to their men) teaching their children god-knows-what could be seen as quite threatening. By the same token, when two men are in a relationship, people always ask, sniggering, 'Who is the woman?' Meaning, who is subordinate? Because it's impossible to have an equal relationship.

(Not that I think gay relationships are ipso facto equal - race, social status, education, money of course affect any relationship dynamics)

I broke the news to my father we were having babies. 'Who is going to be the image father ?' he asked. Quaint wording, antiquated ideas. He wasn't closed to the idea, but it's interesting that that was his first response. Where is the man in their life? he wants to know. LG's father was fairly uninterested until we told him that the kids would have her surname - ie his name. They are the first grandkids with his name, and he seemed to perk up a bit at that.

That's the patriarchy in action. Just make sure the men aren't left out of our kids' lives.
But - I'm curious, whether you're straight or gay. Do you think gay/lesbian relationships are essentially the same? Or essentially different?

oh hooray for Labor I don't think

Here's the new ALP National policy on same-sex relationship recognition.

Chapter 13 new paragraph after 17

Labor will ensure that all couples who have a mutual commitment to a shared life do not suffer discrimination because they are not married.

Labor will take action to ensure the development of nationally consistent, state-based relationship recognition legislation that will include the opportunity for couples who have a mutual commitment to a shared life to have those relationships registered and certified.

This legislation will:
- be based on the scheme that has existed in Tasmania since 2004 and that the Victorian Government has announced its intention to introduce;
- not create schemes that mimic marriage or undermine existing laws that define marriage as being between a man and a woman

****
State based laws? Still can't leave my super to LG. Can't co-adopt. LG can't get dependent spouse rebate if she is supporting me & kid.
And heaven forbid we undermine the very fabric of society by getting married.
I'm not going get on my hobbyhorse again. It's just such an obvious sop to the rednecks and right wing Christians I can't believe anyone falls for it.

At least I'm not at risk of losing the single parents' pension ('cause, you know, I'm single). I will collect it with pride and a clear sense of entitlement.

Another suitor leaves downcast.

This is Indy, Zara's brother and our next door neighbour in the hills. He decided to put on his fairy dress and do a concert for us. To the strains of Abba (where did he get THAT from?). It started out quite delicate and graceful but quickly morphed into a kind of haka.

"Yes," I said to the taxi driver, a cheerful jet-black Kenyan man, recently arrived from New Zealand.

He'd been telling me about his family's coffee farm, and how until he arrived in New Zealand, he had never had breakfast without giraffes present. "They're very friendly, and they like lettuce," he told me.
He said he rode zebra often.
"No one can ride zebra," I said.
"No, that is not true. If you catch it young you can ride it. I caught many zebra. It is like an ass." He sounded quite certain, but I'm sure I've read that it's impossible to ride zebra.
He told me that his father was a surgeon, educated at Oxford. That his family left Kenya because of the corruption, "but it is much better now." That he was a businessman, he owned this very taxi we were driving in, had a shop in African art and had bought his own house for $450,000 in the western suburbs of Brisbane.

Then, as we were pulling up outside my hotel, he asked me if I was married.
In the three second gap - the maximum allowable between question and response before any answer, no matter how truthful, is going to come off sounding like a lie, I pondered my responses.

I hate being closeted.
I hate pretending Lovergirl doesn't exist.
It's not my job to educate a new arrival.
But it's someone's.
I don't feel like I'm in any danger if i'm honest.
But we are friends! I'm enjoying my conversation about Africa. I don't want to deal with that slight gap, that moment when the air opens into nothingness, just before the listener says, 'Oh, right, of course.' Or, 'I thought so.' Or, inevitably, and with slightly too much bright enthusiasm, 'Oh, my best friend/third cousin/ mother's girlfriend is gay.'
I want him to like me. I don't want him to disapprove of me.
Am I being patronising? He's obviously from a well-educated middle class family; they might have a thriving sophisticated gay scene in Kenya.
How religious are they in Kenya? Too late to ask now.
He's a taxi driver for fuck's sake! Why am I thinking about this so much?
And I thought, if I was single and heterosexual, in this situation I might say I was married anyway.

So I mumbled, 'Yes, I'm married'.

Then I felt like Peter. You know, how Jesus tells Peter that Peter will betray Jesus three times before the cock crows? And Peter says, no I never will. Then of course he does. That was me. Because I have the luxury of pretending to be something I'm not, when it suits me.

Me, Consumerist?

It is raining and raining and raining here; it's been raining solidly for about two weeks now. My shoes are going mouldy, the lantana is rejoicing as tendrils reach for the skies, the stuff in the garage is rusting or rotting (depending on inclination), the path is treachorously carpeted with lichen, and I have no dry clothes. It's been raining a lot here, in the last year. So bizarre to read in the newspapers every day about water restrictions, dying lawns and desalination plants as the overflow from our tank runs down the hill, creating a lovely little stream. I suppose all the rain that's not falling on the rest of you has to land somewhere - well, it's landing on us.

Last weekend in the SMH I read an article about a group of friends who decided, a year ago, to not buy anything for the next twelve months. They called it the "Compact" - it's some Mayflower pilgrim reference. The contemporary Compact group's agreement was not to buy anything new for a year, except food and essentials - soap, toothpaste, undies. They buy secondhand, or repair or make, or swap. Initially there were ten of them, then word spread, and about 4,000 people decided to give it a try. In the ensuing year, they've been accused of being unAmerican and economic terrorists (an appealing concept).

I was impressed by this, and Lovergirl and I have agreed to do this for a year, quite carelessly, as if it's not going to be a big deal. 'Oh, we don't spend much,' we reassured each other. I suspect it will be more challenging than we can imagine. Nothing new? I'm already grieving not being able to buy some coveted items on my fantasy list: after last year's short course in movie-making, a video camera; some stylish new knee-high boots, as the heel is off the last pair; a suitcase because the handle has come off mine (now I have to figure out how to fix it); and any new books at all.

This year-long project is symbolic of my geographical relocation from Byron Bay, the Land of Take-What-You-Want-Because -the-Universe is -Just -Waiting-For-You-to -Manifest-It. Workshops abound on how to envisage your dreams so energies of the planet can hand them to you. There's a strong streak of Just World Hypthesis here - that if you are good, the world will reward you; therefore, as I am living here in luxury, I deserve it. You poor buggers, on the other hand, don't.

For L and I, probably our largest non-essential expenditure is the IVF stuff - about a thousand dollars a throw (an expensive way to gamble), plus the obscene amount we spend on naturopathics, acupuncturists, Chinese herbs and so on. It's such an industry - making money from sad old childless women with disposable income.

I'm not quite sure what to do about entertainment consumption - movies, meals out, videos, ballroom dancing lessons, Italian classes, going to hear guest speakers, theatre, Writers Festivals and so on. Flights to visit our families in Sydney and Melbourne, haircuts - they must be essential, surely? And what about newspapers? I would spend more of my discretionary income on those sort of things than possession-type purchases. Lovergirl has said, in quite a decided tone, "I'm not prepared to go a year without movies," so I suppose in the interests of preserving my relationship I'll have to sacrifice some principles and accompany her. Just to keep her company.

No popcorn though.

Ding-dong the witch is (about to be) dead

<-- Kangaroo paw monster in the garden

"Prime Minister John Howard says Saddam Hussein's trial and verdict are a triumph for the Iraqi people."

How thin our veneer of civilisation is.
Is opposing the death penalty a sign of 'civilisation'? I suppose I just take it as a given - the death penalty is bad.
And surely if anyone deserves to die, Saddam Hussein does.
And yet...the joy and dancing in the streets at his sentence leaves me uneasy.
But... he hasn't killed any of my relatives, so am I entitled to an opinion?
If only those directly affected by crimes made the decisions about what happens to the criminals it would definitely be an eye-for-an-eye system of justice...

Too complex for me with my limited knowledge of philosophy, law and history.
I'm just left with this vague disturbed feeling as people celebrate a man (a monster! the contemporary face of evil!) condemned to death.

Addendum 7/11/06: I've just found that Susoz has expressed the same concerns in a much more articulate fashion. What a relief! it's so terrifying for me to think that I am putting forward an opinion that might be different to the dominant consensus - what if I'm wrong?

Uncommon values

women trying on tie-dyed fashions at Byron market

This morning I went to see a Life Coach. On the scale of North Coast things to do, this is almost mainstream.

I met Gillian the life coach though Toastmasters, one of my daggier hobbies. Toastmasters is embarrassing and quite tedious, but incredibly useful. I'm a good public speaker now, and reasonably fearless. Gillian was a librarian in a past life. Now she's travelling the country and to New Zealand running workshops in being true to yourself and seizing your authentic power. I thought I could use a little authentic power.

It seems fairly certain we are moving to Brisbane now. Funny - it was my idea as I was feeling stifled and directionless here on the North Coast. Lovergirl didn't want to move and had everything here humming along fine. But Lovergirl is the one who has worked out exactly what she wants to do with her time in the River City. The plan at the moment is to stay there for two years, during which time Lovergirl will get her clinical masters and work part time as a lecturer at the therapeutic school she trained at. She's got it all sorted and is ready to go, is going up to Brisbane next Monday for a meeting with her school to sort out her lecturing timetable for next year. Me, I'm still waffling around, going, 'What do I want to do with my life?' All I can think is that I don't want to do any more mental health work. (Why is it called mental health when it is solely concerned with mental illness?). And now that I'm no longer assuming that I will eventually get pregnant, I need to find something that's important to me to do.

Hence the life coach.

My homework is to come up with a list of ten priorities, "Or as many as you want!" said Gillian. But first I have to list my values. Apparently once I've articulated my values, my priorities will become much clearer.

Have you noticed how values are being appropriated by the right, taken to mean conservative values? When Gillian started talking about values, I had a reaction. It's the same thing that's happened with the Australian flag. When we were kids, Dad, a proud immigrant, had a flagpole and would fly the flag on important occasions - Queen's Birthday, Australia Day, Labour Day and so on. Now, whenever I see the Australian flag flying outside someone's house, I assume it's a house of homophobic Muslim-bashing duck-shooting rednecks.

Now values are the new battleground. And it seems that the left just shies away, admitting by default that 'values' are synonymous with heterosexuality, Christianity and working hard to get yourself ahead.

So I've been pondering my own values. A bit challenging, as a conscious exercise. This is what I've come up with so far:

- Connections to family and friends are very important to me. I value loyalty and interdependence. I like to think we live in villages or communities, not discrete little family, couple or single units. I like doing things for my tribe and knowing others will be there for me in the same way.

- It's important to try to create a better world, not just accept things as they are

- It's important to be a good person... now I'm trying to think what a 'good person' is. A good person is...umm...I suppose a good person does all the other things on this list.

- It's important to live according to your beliefs & values, not just have them for show, such as using public transport instead of just bemoaning carbon emissions.

- It's important to think about things and not just blindly accept what others say.

- It's important to consider the whole planet my actions - other people in my community, animals, third world countries, how the way I'm living impacts on those

- It's important to keep learning

A value I'd like to have more of is around having fun. I don't think it's very important to have fun, in fact I think there's something slightly scandalous about it. And value I'd like to have less of is the belief that 'It's important to help people'. I think it's patronising. Jonathon and I were having a discussion, and he was talking about the idea of working with people not because you want to 'help' them, but because 'my liberation is tied up with yours.' I like that idea.

What values are important to you? I'd really like to know. Besides, it will help me with my homework...

Here come the brides

Last week I went to a 6th birthday party and a small child I didn't know proudly brought me this ladybug to show me. She was entranced. All the other kids were running around wildly, playing 'What's the Time Mr Wolf?' and making forts in the trees, while she turned over leaves looking for bugs.

Her mother, seeing that I had become the solemn noticer of said, 'Oh yes, Lucy is just obsessed with insects. She loves them. We are only just learning that she can't keep them; they die and she is devastated. So now she looks at them and holds them until they fly away.'

Lovergirl's nephew Tim is the same age, and he's fixated on cars. He can name many different brands of cars, and discuss wisely the reasons why you might have different sorts of cars - four wheel drives, or station wagons, or coupes or soft-tops. He arranges his own extensive collection of matchbox cars in various comnbinations along the hallways of the apartment. And little Max, whose birthday it was, loves fabrics. He loves the textures and the colours, he loves draping them around things, decorating household items like lamps and beds and couches, and instructing any willing adults to add indivicual touches to his shop-bought clothes - a bit of leopardskin velour in the middle of a plain skivvy, a fringe of gold material down the side of a pair of jeans.

How common are these fascinations? And how long do they last? Will Lucy become an entomologist, Tim an automotive engineer, and Max a fashion designer? Or will they forget all about it and become drudging policy writers, shop assistants and accountants like the rest of us?

More big fusses about gay marriage at the moment. SMH commentator Adele Horin, while all for us marrying if that's what we want to do, is bewildered by our desire for the holy state of matrimony, and says John Howard should celebrate gays wanting to get married as a triumph of conservatism - we are finally wanting to make our way back into the fold of monogamy, commitment and conservative values. Instead, he flaps about saying that gay marriage "undermines the traditional institution" - although I thought the straights had done a pretty good job of undermining it themselves.

Strangely enough, a big supporter of gay marriage is Warren Entsch, a Liberal redneck federal parliamentarian from Far North Queensland (you don't get much more redneck than that) who said asylum seekers should be left to starve in their boats out to sea. For some reason he's taken this on as a human rights issue. I suppose us gays are Austrayan, unlike the evil queue jumpers. It's funny where people draw the line about what they are willing to stand up for.

I don't know if I'd actually get married, but I don't like someone telling me I can't. I was at a forum on gay marriage recently - the Gay & Lesbian Rights Lobby wanted information on whether it was something they should be fighting for. One woman - a portly older lawyer with a long grey plait snaking down her back - was fiercely against it, saying it would be too hard on underprivileged lesbian couples who at the moment can each claim unemployment benefits becasue they are not recognised as a couple. Her argument was something along the lines of it being a fair compensation for all the shit we still put up with. For me, it seems like selling our rights for thirty pieces of silver - that small loophole means that gays and lesbians are divided on whether or not we want to be recognised as legal couples. Thus diddling ourselves out of all sorts fo things like superannuation and parenting rights and inheritance and decision making if our partner is in a horrible accident and so on - but also just some intangible respect as a proper relationship.