I don’t know where to start and what to leave out?
This is why I’m leaning towards merely political commentary because if I say the wrong thing about the wrong person shit will hit the fan and maybe that’d be for the best.
So where to start?
It’s gonna be 40 degrees today. I’m hoping a storm comes through early so I can sleep tonight. I didn’t sleep enough last night, too sore from sore muscles and joints from moving, but I’m less sore than Bruce who shouldered most of the heavy work. I’m taking inventory of my bumps and bruises, like the ankle I rolled a few days before we did the main move and it’s still aching. Or the elbow I ignored in the same fall. Or the toes and ankles from kicking and tripping into things. Or the dehydration from moving in an official heatwave.
So I’m pottering around this morning having woken too early so Bruce can get a few hours of work in to catch up from the last week, money and tasks wise. Trying to bring some order to this chaos. Cleaning the kitchen. Sorting my clothes, doing some washing that will be dry five minutes after I hang in out.
I’m still pissed off at the lac of internet connection. I checked and I have more than 1000 gig spare data to use on my Aldi plan for us but it’s not as fast and it’s not the point. They’ve also said they’re going to credit me once the install in done, but that doesn’t help right now hey?
I’ve seriously not cried enough the past week or so. It’s all pent up.
I just wanna get myself into a rhythm again. Routine, not the time of year to try that but it really didn’t have top go up in the air like that.
I’ll put my clothes away today. I did the linen earlier. And more of the living room clutter. I’ve done the dishes since apparently no-one else will. At least I have a dishwasher here, but it needs to be loaded not just looked at.
At least I’ve yet again moved to somewhere beautiful. Have to walk down a street to get to the creek it’s not just in the backyard, but you can see it from the back deck and yeah, I love having cows and sheep and the RFS in the street.
Like, I wasn’t actually EXPECTING them to go back to bulk-billing pensioners, other concession card holder and children despite Labor members spouting on about the triple bulk billing incentive and how they were saving medicare and bulk billing and helping disabled people in this cost of living crisis. Or wait, they didn’t actually say disabled people, they only talk about us when it’s about us being all diagnosed with Autism and getting on the NDIS.
So, I am again just before pension day with less than $20 to my name, because I had to hand over $69 this morning for my GP. Who is unfortunately moving to Queensland next year. Like, this might be a chance to attempt to find a bulk billing doctor near my new place, but ugh, I hate trying to suss out new doctors and feel like they actually want me there.
Jim Chalmers spruiked the simplicity of his first budget, but as the price of items rises faster than the rate of welfare – is it really ‘bread and butter’ for struggling households? #QandApic.twitter.com/p0eECVajlR
We’ve been super stressed here with the move to, I was worried I was gonna take too long with the doctor today and have to pay for a level C consult, but fortunately we realised he could only give me my scripts, reassure me that things will be easier after the mood, and tell me it’s okay to take a little more Quetiapine til the move’s done since I’m so agitated.
There was an article in the Guardian this week “‘You can’t send them to their room’: the tensions and challenges of parenting adult children” and credit to my parents who took my sister and me back in as growned ups, a certainly not in easy times in our lives. But this is my challenge now, parenting 18 year olds, when I didn’t even parent them as kids. While they themselves are parents now trying to figure out how to do that too.
Yes, I’m a mountain of stress at the moment, moving house before Christmas wasn’t in my plan, but here we are, and I’m glad that the finding part was so short (8 days between finding out the owners were selling and being accepted for a place). But this next month is gonna be crazy. Crazier than normal for a homeful of neurodivergent people just trying to find their place in the world. At least we’ll fit into the new place – aside from the purple bathtub it has a secondary bathroom that I get to relegate the kids to!
After reading that Guardian piece, I was thinking about the situations of having to move back in with your parents, and how I did that, but I was moving in with parents who own their own home. While it puts pressure on everyone, one big strain that’s come from having the kids here is us renting this place (and the next place) and them being here being in breach of the lease agreement that only two adults maximum would live here regularly. After three months it’s certainly regularly. Them being in their mum’s house but over 18 and not on the lease was included as a reason why they could be considered homeless by the social worker before bub was born, because they could be asked to leave at any moment.
Fortunately we've gotten another rental to move to for 12 months, but the 18 year olds won't be on the lease so we'll technically be in breach of its conditions having them there Having your adult kids move in and not on the lease ins the new having undeclared pets in a rental.
So, when they moved in and shortly after we were informed of an inspection. my fear was that the real estate wouldn’t take too kindly to there being extra bodies in the house. Which is one of the reasons why that inspection and trying to get everything clean was so stressful, not a hair outta place was the aim. And getting the kids to get their stuff done was a task in itself with the new bub and mental health issues and so forth. Fun. But we got there. And then we thought we’d get to stay.
PSYCH!
So, they’re coming to the new place with us, again not on the lease, and I was thinking, are adult children that aren’t on your lease the new undeclared pets that you hide at your mates when it’s inspection day? That you could have legally had one they were under 18, but full time as adults is naughty naughty and it’s not like you’re going to try to GET them on the lease when you apply since, like not declaring your dog, they make you lower down the list and youth don’t look good to any real estate agent?
So, I was able to stay in the home my parents owned, but then we’re smuggling kids here in our rental, risking our own tenancy and not just our sanity. And their kids? I can’t exactly being the teenagers back to my parents like Jen did with her bubs either.
It’s also not even about saving for a house deposit any more. Somehow they’ll need to find at least $3000 upfront for bond and 2 weeks rent when they DO find a place. Hard to save for any, impossible on youth allowance, and I know there’s bond loans but ugh they do now look good on paper do they :/
What rental crisis?
Yeah sorry I know it’s terrible out there and yes prices are stupid but I’ll bask on the glory of getting the second place I inspected, 8 days after the possibility of having to find a new place was raised when we were informed the current creekside house was going on the market and we could be given 30 days notice if the new owner wanted vacant possession.
And I was so close to breaking in that short period of time. I was soooo restless, sleeping terribly, pacing, picking. Managed to mount a kerb in my AU the day of the second inspection (yesterday) and Busted my 17. Of course I didn’t have a spare so Bruce had to show up with a 16 (though he ended up bringing a 15) to get the car home.
I called him in panic, then had to compose myself and impress the agent at this private viewing.
Which I suppose I did woot woot cos she put us forward to the owner and called me this morning to offer us the place.
And yes, it has a freaking purple bathtub
So yeah. It’s $60 more a week (geez thanks for that $13 a week rent assistance increase Jim) and we have the time and expense of moving and cleaning and overlapping rent weeks and yeah.
At this stage the kids and bub are coming with, maybe being more out of town will motivate them to look for a place and then we can really feel how horrific this rental scene is. But we’ll see how we go, and we don’t have to make them homeless with a 3 month old.
So, sorting stuff. We have bulk waste collection conveniently the week of the 27th so if in doubt, out the front it goes!
I may have set up my xmas tree and some lawn lights already but from the 4th I can set up at the new place. New place new vibe. Get that lemon theme kitchen going hard-core to complement the purple wash room.
And babies first Christmas in the new place will surely be fun!
Senator Fatima Payne: The killing of innocent civilians in Israel should be condemned and we condemn it. The killing of innocent civilians in Palestine should also be condemned and we must condemn it. The international community loudly and proudly condemned Russia’s occupation of Ukraine when it started attacking Ukraine in 2014 yet today the world watches as the state of Israel deprives the entire population—men, women and children—of the basic necessities of life: food, water, electricity, gas and medicines. We must condemn it.
Israeli missiles strike residential dwellings, civilians, multistorey apartments, health facilities as well as places of worship, indiscriminately killing men, women and children. We must condemn it. Human Rights Watch confirms that Israel is using white phosphorous in Gaza. That violates the international humanitarian law prohibition. We must condemn it.
The price tag of Israel’s right to defend itself cannot be the destruction of Palestine. Israel’s right to defend its civilians cannot equate to the annihilation of Palestinian civilians. I hereby call for an immediate ceasefire to come into effect, alongside many world leaders and experts. Food, water, medicine and humanitarian aid need to be allowed to get through and reach the victims. Mediation and talks need to start, as obviously violence has not solved anything for the past 75 years, and a just and long-lasting solution needs to be sorted out.
I roll some more marbles, drop some more fantasy units in the games that I play quite passively with twitch streamers, in the other window I scroll through tweets, playing speeches by world leaders, interviews of ordinary people. People excuse the genocide of the Palestinian people, saying they literally did this to themselves, of course.
I just want to buy a Palestinian flag marble, there’s an Israeli one. Consume my way through this. Like buying a Kuffiya with purple in the weave to wear this summer to keep the sun off my pale skin, Or in solidarity at at Rally, a rally they try to scare us off from going to with threats of random searches or fines and imprisonment. Because order is more important in so-called Australia than justice, be it social or climate. Keep the peace, keep the status quo, however racist that may be.
Israel bombed a hospital. 500 to a thousand people dead. Patients, homeless, internal refugees, doctors, nurses, teachers, the disabled who had nowhere else to go.
But what if Hamas were hiding under there?
What if?
Whatif Hamas were hiding in your town. Holding a meeting at the Workers Club, storing weapons in the highschool hall. Sure, wipe out your city, your town, It’s for the overall good, what’s 500 more brown lives.
Oh but this is where I have to condemn Hamas’ attack on Israel, and the kidnappings of Israeli civilians. And I do. Hamas should not have done that. They should also not have been able to sneak in under the gaze of the most technologically advance military in the world. Australia buys its Centrelink surveillance tech from Israel, they don’t need our military aid.
Hamas aren’t the good guys. But neither is the state of Israel.
(I pause to hang out my washing inbetween rain showers)
I curse that the kids bring out all their plates and cups to wash at once, but am pleased to have running water to wash with, food to feed them, a safe place for them and the baby to sleep. “First world problems” we say as we deal with out day to day mental health or cost of living pressures, holding baby Emery tight while babies are bombed evacuating as directed by their oppressors.
We voted against the Voice to parliament. The least we could do, give Blak people an advisory voice to the colonial government. My electorate voted over 70% no. I’m not surprised. One booth, Wollombi, yoted majority yes. I voted yes in a referendum we shouldn’t have had a say in.
But what do you expect? They say the voting pattern was similar to that of the 1999 republic vote that I missed out on by a year, the same seats leaning yea and no, The spread very similar, the same people voting for the status quo. The same people being blamed for being uneducated and poor, The same people being fundamentally happy with being a British colony, and even if we do think we should move forward from that, it’s not the pressing thing that people who are living day to day care to debate.
Yes, we are a racist country. If was the racist no, not the sovereign no, or the disengaged no that won on the day. You see this here in the gloating in the facebook groups, the Blak kids being followed in the supermarkets, the white people claiming they’re just as discriminated against as Aboriginal people.
But the disinformation comes through. I was waiting at the foodbank for the afternoon free pies, there was a small group discussing the referendum and how the new world order had something to do with it. How Covid was a conspiracy to make someone money, how this one guys was beaten up in school by black kids so that means they can’t be racismed against.
“It’s okay to be white” was a motion in our parliament, just as “Israel has a right to defend itself” too precedence over condemning their war crimes. Nazi’s in Melbourne get an armed escort home on the train while they harass and intimidate anyone not white. They take the chance to yell anti-Semitic slurs and graffiti while also calling the Palestinian protestors terrorists.
I just go back to making my cupcakes and doing my little chores.
