What do you want to be when you grow up?

Puppy Trainer, rock star and skateboarding fashion designer are my Kids current career choices and I hope the list is still the same when they are 45. I want them to stay open, stay free, because you sure as hell don't know whats right for your life at 17.

I firmly believe the fact that I have no particular direction when it comes to career has led me into the most interesting roles. Yes I am poorer, no I won't be a secure self funded pensioner, but I have life skills up the wazoo.




I am easily distracted when it comes to work/ job ideas and could easily apply for the role of Segway tour guide, dental receptionist and cake decorator all in one day.

I know without a doubt that I would make a kick-arse lady of leisure. You know, the pearl wearing do - lunch lady who volunteers once a month at some charity for rich dyslexic puppies and who's idea of housework is to write a note for the cleaning lady.

or maybe a tortured writer?, small cabin in the country, polo neck jumper, a goat and 4 dozen half written novels and a borderline addiction of some sort?

In all seriousness though, if my fairy god mother was to grant me the opportunity to win any job I wanted in the world, I would choose to be the "Colour trend forecaster" for Pantone (the world famous experts in all things colour). I am not even sure this role exists, but I dream that it goes something like this. I travel the world with a camera and photograph colours and colour combinations both in natural and urban settings. I find inspirational colours.

or win lotto, you know, I am easy.

Being an Adult is Stupid

Late last night I was thinking about the differences between being a Kid and being an Adult.

I came to the conclusion that the main non physical difference is the percentage of shit you don't want to do but have to do increases. The "Have - To's" just keep rolling in once you reach about 25 and grow exponentially until I don't know when.

Who spends their whole days off, their supposed "free time" checking off a list of "Have - Tos"? I know we call them errands and get a sense of accomplishment to have completed a full list, but did that mean spending 10 hours in your bloody car and another two in some sort of queue?

Or even worse than that, did you actually have some free time and spent it worrying about what you weren't doing in order to have this free time?

I watch my kids sometimes, they can spend a whole day doing what ever they please, interrupted only with requests for food. I am so happy they get to do that.
However, even their "Have - tos" list is growing. As school students and as family members, they have chores and homework and jobs to complete. They are learning every day about time limits and working within them. Adults in training. We as parents make them have the "Have - Tos".

Dont get me wrong, I want them to be contributing members of society, I want them to think of others and I want them to lead comfortable lives, so at some point they will need to work.
What I don't want for them is the stress and anxiety that comes from being the type of adult that forgets how to Kid. I want them to be safe in the knowledge that the "Want - Tos" are as equally important as the "Have - Tos".

I dont want this to be some kind of wanky "stop and smell the roses" post. But I think it might be....

Keys... Yes please

We are in the Hippo, our 30ft, 3 bed motorhome, a little dented and war wounded after having carted us from New Jersey to Niagra, through Pennsylvania, Carolina and Greogia  to Florida. We had a slight altercation with a metal safety barrier on a freeway in Jersey and we were all  a little worse for wear. Oh... And if anyone asks, it was a massive grizzly. 

We had been freezing our butts off in wintery Niagra, bored shirtless in the middle of "Camouflage, hunting and people of Walmart" America and we arrive in the Florida keys. It is a breath of salty fresh air and so quiet. There is only one place, one state park, you can stay in with a motor home.  It's in Long Key. It's not Key West, it's not restaurants and hotels, its not key lime pie and drunk girls. It's sandy car parks and beach, a throw back to 1960's motels with shell shaped little villas.  It's heaven. Quiet camp spots, right  on the beach. There is no wifi, no tv. We park up, get out our camp chairs, plonk them in the water and chiiiiiiiiilllllllll. Relax,the closest land mass is Mexico. 
Picture it, 
Warm, quiet beach, with no one really around and only a small threat of being stung and bitten from some small jelly fish. We are from Australia, you've got nothing that can kill us.
We are chilled. For 5 days, we do nothing. 
Wake up, coffee, sit on the beach. In the Hippo for nap when it's hot. After lunch we sit on our chairs in the water and stay there until after sunset. Naked frolicking children and the odd jelly fish and kayaker for entertainment followed by a spectacular sunset. 
The only negative was a thing called a "Noseeum" literally "no see them". A little invisible insect that bites like a Mozzie, But, the bite will keep itching days or weeks after you have been bitten every time you sweat or get hot. Resulting in head to toe redness and itchiness. So. God. Damn. Itchy. There is no repellent or cream that works. But it was worth it. We hadn't planned to visit the Florida keys and we saw nothing of the well known Florida keys, but we had our own private beach and our hippo and our family. Yes, I did sing the Beach Boys song "Kokimo" continuously for 5 days and we got to keep our "Noseeum" souvenirs. 



Oh and seriously, the rented camp chairs where already rusty and covered with seaweed, if anyone asks :)

Same, same but different.

I have never questioned my decisions and myself more than in the last three weeks.
Everything I do or think of doing is scrutinised tortuously by my brain in an attempt to work out if i'm ok or if i'm, at least, understanding why I may not be ok.

Under normal circumstances the core belief that I subconsciously carry in my gut is i'm ok, things are good and all is ok. It might not be in the moment, but the foundations of my life are good.

Let me just clarify, I have a wonderful Father, who is also dealing with his own grief of losing a wife of 36 years, an amazing Husband, who loved my mother like his own, Two children, who are strong and a joy to be around but are also dealing, in their own way, with the loss of their beloved VoVo and Friends with their own lives, children and challenges who have volunteered their time or their ears to help me. I am not alone, I am not even unusual. Every face that passes through my work or that I see on the bus has been or will be floored by grief at some point in their lives. Do they handle things like I do? Do they want to share their thoughts and memories or do they retreat to deal in complete privacy?

I get sad at night, i'll sneak away from the action of the household and lie down. I have a chewbacca wookie teddy bear, that Dave and the girls gave me for my birthday in December. Mum was already in hospital and really sick. I have been hugging this thing every night, for about two months. This isn't healthy, I don't think, but it helps.

I didn't want to write this blog yesterday or last night, I am struggling a little to do it now. I can't get the flow, I am tired, I don't want to seem like I am trying to make my grief the spotlight. But I think this is good for me. I am a sharer and never have I written like this in my life. I have a slew of journals that have one entry on the shiny first page and were never touched again.

In a conversation with Dad yesterday, I said "The experience of Mum passing and the memories I have are now more like a ball or a sphere, in the first few days, the ball was shoved up right in front of my eyes, it was the colour red and it was all I could see, so the ball seemed as big as the world, now its a bit further away, I can hold the ball in my hand at arms length and turn it a little, look at different angles, sometimes, without my heart exploding in my chest". 
I think that is a healthy progression, but is it too soon?

But, life goes on, right? The clocks don't stop, the cracks I feel in my own heart aren't showing on the pavement outside. There is nothing new here. 
From now on, its same, same but different. 

No, Venice lady, we didn't steal your TV and other tales from AirBnB

The only way we were able to afford to travel through Europe and America for 6 months was Airbnb.

The.Only.Way.

As a group of four, two of whom valued privacy from time to time and two who were exhausted parents who needed their beauty sleep, we made the rule of no more than AU $200 per night and where possible two bedrooms or at very least one seperate bedroom and a lounge room with sofa bed. Also, NO house shares (meaning staying with other people in the same place).

As luck and providence would have it, we stayed in some really awesome apartments, met some very nice people and were only accused of theft and vandalism once.

We stayed in a few homes that were much the same and passed by in a bit of blur. These were all mostly ok, one bedroom places with lumpy sofa beds in sizes ranging from tiny to small, no air con and some interesting design choices. Like a toilet next to the front door, a loft bedroom with a roof so low we had to kneel to get up the stairs and decapitated ourselves promptly in the morning, an elevator which only fitted one small suitcase at a time and never people, never ever people, Oh, and with no locks. 

Which brings me to Venice. A little one bedroom apartment in a quieter part overlooking canals. No security and no locks. We stayed four nights and had a very good time getting lost in tiny streets. At the end of our time, we cleaned up, packed up, shut the door and left, like instructed. On Airbnb, as a visitor, you can leave a review saying if you enjoyed your stay. The owner can also leave a review of you, as a visitor.

"You Stole My TV!" was the review we received, publicly. Now keep in mind we still had about 2 months worth of Europe trip to go and another 8 places to stay and Everyone can see that we are apparently thieves. My calm and well thought out response was something like "Ah, no, we didn't. We are a family of four travelling by TRAIN, with SUITCASES! Where the F* would we put your bloody TV? I am at the point where I am throwing out shoes because I can't be arsed carting them around, but now I have room for a TV???? your F*n nuts!". Airbnb graciously stepped in at that point and removed the post.

The vandalism part of our Airbnb story occurred in Pisa. The shittiest apartment of all the ones we stayed in and also the cheapest ($65 per night). Let that be a lesson to you all!

It was a basement conversion into a mouldy, mosquito infested, concrete sweat box. In our attempt to cool the room from boiling lava to the devils arm pit, we apparently damaged the fan thingy and somehow or another unplugged the fridge. This apparently caused major damage. So much damage in fact that he was able to rent it out to some other unsuspecting schmucks the very next day.

It really wasn't all bad, in fact, mostly it was brilliant.

In Paris, our first Airbnb, we had a small, old beautifully appointed apartment. We could just see the top of the Eiffel tower from the kitchen window and you could almost fit one person in the shower (but you had to do the limbo in order to wet your head). An attic apartment in a converted old theatre with ancient wooden beams in Montpellier. A huge apartment in the funkiest part of Rome, a decent apartment smack bang in the middle of the red light district of Milan, a renovated little beauty deep in the heart of Dominican Harlem, New York and lastly a beautiful, light filled, arty and comfy place in the Jewish Orthodox area of Beverly Hills, where we, ironically, celebrated Christmas.

I loved the adventure of discovering each new place and the pot luck that is Airbnb added to that sense of excitement. Things I learned were:

If its too cheap, Don't. Really Don't.

Stay as central as you can or at very least as close as you can to subways/metros and a supermarket.

Contact the owners of the different places you are staying as much as possible. If they don't want to talk with you about your upcoming stay, your in for a shit one probably.

It is possible to negotiate a better rate when staying for a week or more.

Treat each place with respect and clean up when you go, at least dishes, floors and rubbish.

You can get a decent price for a second hand TV, ;-)

2 deaths, 1 illness, 6 months, 7 countries, 2 kids, 1 hubby and a hippo

"Caroline? You had better sit down. Joe* was found dead last night, looks like he took his own life".
He had worked for/with me, a troubled man with a young family. I was a real estate agent and managing a small office, with a smaller team. I can't say I knew him well, but I tried to help him. I tried to see that he got back at least close to the rails if not on them.

I rang Dave and told him. I didn't feel responsible, but I did feel a little neglectful, like I had washed my hands of him, and now  a while down the track, this was the result. This was only a month or so after another man we knew through our work had died in a tragic accident, again leaving a young family behind.

"Wow, thats terrible, I found out today that Matthew* is really sick, he's only in his thirties! Fuck it life is too short for this! I think we should just bloody do it!" shouted Dave.

For about two days we had been talking about IT. You know the dream that you talk about animatedly with your significant other after a couple of glasses. For the first and probably the only time in our lives we had the borrowing capacity to pull IT off. You thought I was going to say, we had the money.... trust me.... we will never have the savings for a huge trip, let alone IT, but we had the potential to pull it off. The incentive? A good deal of "Lets get the fuck out of here" followed with a smidge of "We will probably never be close to being able to do this again".

So we did. 6 months of travel with our kids (two gorgeous girl firecrackers aged 7 and 8) to all the dream destinations we could think of.

Once the decision was made, and the bank paid up, next came the fight. Dave wanted to leave yesterday, now, immediately. I, on the other hand was working through the logistics, we had to clean up our house and find some people to rent it. Organise some sort of schooling for the girls. Give notice to work, pack, put the rest of our stuff in storage... plan, book and pay, break the news to my parents and friends. I thought we needed at least three months to get our selves organised. I put my foot down! 2 weeks later we were on the tarmac and that is how it all started.