After eight long weeks of, at best, broken sleep I’ve got a list as long as your arm of stupid things I’ve done under the influence of exhaustion. Unfortunately I’ve forgotten most of them so below is a short list of things I’ve done today that really need to be chalked up to tiredness.

You know you’re tired when:

• You confuse the name of the Liberal party leader with Peter Rabbit (you know, Mr Rabbit).
• You leave the house in your ugly slippers for the second day in a row.
• You get into the shower (with the water running) while still clutching your towel.

What stupid things have you done while and/or because of lack of sleep?

I’m totally brain dead today, we’ve had a string of bad days with Abi so I think writing a whole blog post might be beyond me so here’s a list of things that I’ve found most annoying lately.

1. Having to convince someone that sleeping is a perfectly legitimate pass time.
2. Not being able to do what you want when you want to do it…or at all.
3. Having to entertain someone…even while you’re in the loo.
4. Lack of sleep (need I say more?).
5. Repetitive moralistic or learning oriented television programs.

What have been the most annoying things in your parenting experience?

This is something that has been driving me mad over the past couple of weeks. At the moment, those of us with a private twitter account are unable to approve follow requests. Basically this means we look like we’re being snobs when in fact we simply can’t make any changes.

Twitter are aware of this issue and say that they’ve made it a priority issue so hopefully we’ll see an improvement soon. In the meantime I’ll go ahead and not hold my breathe.

Naughty Daddy and I just finished watching “Julie and Julia“. I wasn’t really sure what I’d think about this movie. I hoped I’d enjoy it, but cooking recipes from a cooking book (even a famous one) and blogging about it as a premise for a movie? I wasn’t even sure about it as a premise for a blog!

I guess this kind of thing is every bloggers dream. Even if only in the deepest realms of our secret hearts most of us would like to receive some kind of recognition from/for our blogs. Whether that be a book deal, a movie based on our entries or an invitation to join Play School, we’d all like someone who is someone to tell us that what we’re doing and how we’re doing it makes us someone too. More than a blogger…a writer as Julie puts it in the movie.

Overall, I really did enjoy Julie and Julia, though I have to admit I found Meryl Streep’s voice really grating, regardless of how accurate it was. To my mind the movie didn’t fully portray the tension between Julie and her husband well enough to warrant him walking out and not returning until the next night–especially as he was not portrayed as being a jerk. Nor did it portray the under current in Julia’s life.

But these things are fairly minor even in the scheme of the movie.

What are your blogging goals (secret or otherwise)?

Did you see the news last night about poor Nona Belomesoff? The 18 year old who was lured off Facebook by a man who offered her a job but instead murdered her? Aside from being incredibly saddened for her family, the less rational portion of my brain was thinking “Right, that’s it. Erin’s never going on the internet. She’s never going to have a Facebook profile and she’s sure as hell never going on Twitter!” Even the rational part of my brain was getting in on the act yelling “Right on sister!”

The trouble is, keeping our kids away from the internet is not the answer and it’s not going to work, especially not for older children.

I spoke earlier in the week and gave a list of five things you can do to keep your kids safe on the internet. My fourth point “Discuss the risks of meeting online friends face to face” is what I want to expand upon today.

We first got the internet in our house in 1996, but it wasn’t until 1998 when I was 18 like Nona that I began to go out and meet people I’d befriended in IRC chat and email lists. I met a great variety of people but none who were anything but friendly. It was because of those meetings I went on to meet, face to face, with the man who became my husband.

So, how did I manage to stay safe all those years ago? I have to say a lot of it was probably luck! There was no one back then warning us about how dangerous it can be to meet someone who is essentially a stranger. In hindsight I’ve learned a lot.

Regardless of whether you’re a child or an adult, here are my tips for meeting people online.

• Insist on public meetings – do not, under any circumstances, meet your online friend at their home (or yours) or another private place.
• Meet in groups – take a friend along, especially for night time meetings.
• Know your exits – should you need to make a hasty retreat how are you going to get out and back to your car or public transport quickly?
• Use your mobile phone – as much as I don’t like kids with phones they do have a place in keeping you and your children safe–think “Mum I need you come pick me up”.

The internet is becoming a bigger and bigger part of our lives. You can look for jobs online, do research for school or uni or about medical conditions, procedures or find a doctor. You can make friends, keep up with the news, have your say on any topic or play games. You can even order your groceries or pizza online if you want!

What I’m getting at is that, yes, it would be safer to have a hard and fast rule that you and your kids will never meet in real life any friends from the internet but, firstly, you’d be missing out on meeting some really great people and potentially some wonderful opportunities. More importantly, in terms of children, this will not work, especially not for older kids. I really do believe that our job as parents is to teach them how the world works and give them the tools and knowledge they need to cope in a multitude of situations.

By and large, I really do believe that meeting people from social networking sites etc is safe. But like everything in life taking care is never a bad thing.

There is a debate going on at the moment in Australia, well one of many, this one is centred around the governments desire to provide what it calls a “clean feed” to all Australians. Basically they plan to censor content which has been refused classification by Australian standards – for instance a movie will be RC if it has both real sex and any form of violence, information about euthanasia and safe injecting rooms are also considered RC. The government claim that this filter will keep our children safe.

Without getting bogged down there are many who believe that certain portions of the debate are failing to see one very important, irrefutable fact. The best thing you can do to keep your kids safe while they’re online is to be a parent.

As a parent, my concern in regard to my children using the internet is less about what they will see and more to do with who they may encounter. So, how do we as parents prevent our kids from falling prey to paedophiles and other undesirables? The same way we do in the rest of their lives. We supervise them, teach them how to cope with certain situations and we build a relationship with your child that enables them to come to us should anything, even slightly, untoward happens.

Five things you can do to keep your child safe online

• Supervise your child’s use of the internet.
• Ensure that your home computer is located in a communal and public area.
• Warn them about disclosing personal information.
• Discuss the risks of meeting online friends face to face.
• Provide boundaries, find safe age appropriate websites for your child and be explicate about sites they’re not allowed to visit.

It’s not easy to be a parent, we constantly need to be on the ball. This is especially true online when things can move so quickly. What do you do to protect your kids online? What websites do you allow or disallow?

I can’t be the only who finds an employer requiring you disclose your date of birth at or before an interview a little distasteful. Baring those who are under the legal age of employment, how is your age going to affect your performance? More to the point, the Age Discrimination Act of 2004 specifically states that an employer may not discriminate against a potential applicant based on age, so why ask the question?

According to one Australian employer, they ask because payroll require it to “apply correct rate of pay”. What, I don’t get it? Payroll require the date of birth of all applicants before they become active employees? Don’t payroll also require your tax file number and bank details? Why not ask for these during your interview process as well?

Claiming that you employ a wide range of people from all age ranges is fantastic, but it doesn’t negate the fact that you choose to ask a question that is a huge faux pas and, quite frankly, none of your business. A question which could, potentially, leaves you open to accusations of age discrimination.

As an employer you have the right to ask questions that pertain directly to an applicant’s ability to perform their duties. For instance, “What hours are you available to work?” or in the case of a late night position “Do you have reliable transport?” Questions such as “How old where you when Men at Work first sang ‘Land Down Under’” are inappropriate and don’t pertain to any position except one where they’re looking for an applicant of a certain age.

Which brings me to my next point; in Australia the only people paid age based wages are “juniors” if your payroll department requires employee’s dates of birth, what does that imply? Secondly, any form REQUIRING a date of birth (ie Tax File Declaration) is completed by the payee/employee, not payroll.

Another article from the archives while I attempt to get my blogging groove back. This post Pass it on – keeping body image in the family was originally published on 6 July 2009

Ever since I decided that having a baby was something I’d like to do I’ve been worried about passing on my self deprecating thoughts to my children—girls or boys—the way my mother did to me.

Comments like “We need to go on a diet” and “That shirts not long enough. It needs to cover your arse” have really hardened my mind set. Ironically, the only thing comments like that have ever done for me is to worsen my eating habits. I remember being 14 and on my way out on a date and feeling really proud that the only thing I’d eaten in the four days previous was an apple.

My mother isn’t a bad person, sure she has her faults, this is what was passed on to her. All the women in my family are the same. My grandmother is always on a diet, my aunt can’t eat three meals a day without gaining weight. Even my skinny cousins “struggle” with their weight.

It has to stop!

This is not the legacy I want for Erin. I do not want my beautiful girl to look into a mirror and hate what she sees. Or wonder what she’s going to wear because nothing looks good on her. Or, god forbid, think she needs to be on a diet when she already weighs under 60 kilos.

What I want her to know is that she is enough. No matter what she weighs, no matter if she can’t run fast or isn’t as smart as the other kids. She’s good enough. She’s special enough. She’s perfect.

But, how do I do that?

Another article from the archives while I attempt to get my blogging groove back. This post Mummy Martyrs was originally published on 17 September 2009

There seems to be renewed pressure for women to be Martha Stewart or June Cleaver. Perfect mothers and wives who tend to the every whim of our children and our husbands. Recently 60 Minutes Australia did a story about the resurgence of 1950’s values and “Housewife Superstars”. A segment about women who do just that.

According to this story, more and more women are choosing to stay at home with their children rather than returning to work. These women are “rebelling” against their mothers choices and feminism in general. I, myself, am one of the two thirds of Australia woman who’d prefer to stay at home rather than returning to work, but I’m also a feminist. I do believe there is a great benefit for children to learn from their parents in an at home environment, but this is my choice and it works for me.

What I don’t agree with is comments like this by Sophie Bacic, an interviewee on the 60 Minutes segment.

Sophie Bacic

This is going to sound really old fashioned now – I believe that financially, if you can afford it the woman stays at home, cooks, cleans, looks after the child, the husband works, he comes home, you look after him when he comes home because he’s been out working all day and he’s the one who’s paying for…paying all the bills. That’s, I believe that that is the role of the women and the husband.

Aside from being inflammatory, this statement goes to show you how, even the women who make “homemaking” their lives, devalue their own contributions. Because her own work fails to draw a wage it’s not equal to or as important as that of her husband who works out side of the home as a plumber.

I actually feel quite sorry for Ms Bacic. She lives in a household where, by her own design, she has no power and her efforts have no value. She believes it’s a partnership–he runs the finances and she runs the house–but by allowing her husband to dole out a portion of money for her to spend in running his house she’s become no more than an unpaid employee.

As I’ve already said, I love that I’m able to stay at home with my child, but my life has more value than who I am in relation to another person. Yes, I’m someone’s wife and someone else’s mother but I’m also a person in my own right who has passions and hobbies. If becoming a “superstar” in the domestic arts means I have to give up those things or put less value on my physical labour than count me out. I’d much prefer to be a “slummy mummy” with a life outside my home and secret piles of laundry and unwashed dishes.

Where do you stand on this debate? Do you run a perfect household or do you prefer to let the vacuuming wait while you go out for a coffee or pursue your own passions?

Honestly, I still haven’t decided if I will continue to blog or if I’ll give it away after so many years. So, in an effort to put off making a decision just yet I’ve decided to republish some of my older posts starting at the beginning–well almost. Unfortunately when I began blogging I only offered a partial feed some posts are lost to history. This post Blogging Peeves was original on November 11 2007

I’m not the world’s greatest speller and I sure as hell suck when it comes to grammar, but there are a few things that will have me turning away from your blog–actually clicking away, but you know what I mean.

Light text on a dark background. This one is nothing personal; I just can’t read white on black. It does really funky things to my eyes and ends up giving me a headache. That said, if you have a blog that I really want to read I may end up cutting and pasting into Word or Notepad.

No paragraph spaces. As Naughty Daddy says, there’s no law that says “thou must use space between paragraphs” but this one still drives me insane! It’s a simple matter of two carriage returns.
You can’t rely on Word’s default formatting to transfer over to a blog post when you cut and paste. You still need to hit the enter key twice.
Chunks of text written without paragraph space are very difficult to read.

Auto-playing music. I come from the school of thought that says “websites should be seen and not heard”. Seriously, how many times have you used a computer in a place were sound would be inappropriate? Or else been surfing the web, either, using dial up or your speakers to listen to your own music? Waiting for music you don’t want to listen to is a pain in the butt, having it break into your music equally so.

If you want to have music on your site that’s fine, I have no problem with that. But I shouldn’t have to opt out. The bottom line is auto-playing music on your blog or anywhere else is annoying and kind of rude. Please stop.