When giving means receiving

Heard a fascinating conversation yesterday between two corporate luvvies rushing to their next meeting as I was walking through the city after my little unpaid volunteer gig. As one earnest expensively suited twerp said to his equally sartorial mate as they bustled importantly down George St: "The problem with corporate giving is how do you make money out of charity?"
He then decided to call on the talents of the marketing division to solve this deepest of worldly problems and get them back into the black. All this while walking past the ever-increasing numbers of homeless people stationed on street corners hoping for a little generosity from passers by. Needless to say these scions of the business community didn't so much as look their way. No corporate giving that day.
Silly me, I thought giving was just that, but obviously it's really about receiving.  Obviously our esteemed Treasurers "Lifters" need a little incentive to understand the what that notion might entail. Merry Xmas and good will to us all.

Salad daze

So for the last year Gorgeous George and I have been on the 5:2 diet. GG has lost about 5kg and so have I. I'm really on it to keep my slightly tubby hubby company more than to lose weight, although given the SERIOUS pain the backside this diet constitutes, it would be nice if I looked in the mirror and saw Claudia Schiffer rather than a slightly squat potato.
Mind you, in a world where there seems to be so much of everything, doing without a couple of times a week seems to be the type of thing that is probably good for the soul. It certainly makes you realise you can do without occasionally and the world won't come to an end, even if you could murder a plate of pasta.
However, I think that maybe it is time for me to abandon my self-righteous attempt to keep Gorgeous George company and lead him to the path of slenderness by example. Today, while enjoying a cup of tea with some friends I found myself mesmerised by the salad sandwich being daintily consumed next to me. I had a serious urge to reach across, thump my friend in the head and make off with her wholegrain with mayo and stuff it down my throat before she had a chance to call the diet police.
So, in the interests of staying out of jail and not becoming the first member of my family to be done for assault and theft of a salad sanger, I have decided that the 5:2 diet and I are parting company.
If it is my fate to resemble a potato, then so be it. Gorgeous George is on his own. Bring on the carbs!

Yours - is this the best we can exppect

Bought a copy of that new magazine YOURS that's aimed at us old girls, ie anyone over 45. Luckily it was less than $4 so I can almost live with the shocking waste - almost. I should have spent it on birdseed. It's from Bauer Mediaand WHAT A LOAD OF SHITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's full of botoxed celebs - all over 45 of course and trying to looking 30 - and stories about how they found luuuuurve and lost weight and are just generally fantastic and so sexy. To cover all the "female middle-aged reader" bases there's a gardening column that features plants that can almost exclusively only be grown in the tropics, a recipe for a low-fat cheese cake, because we are all obviously still desperately trying to squeeze into size 8 sexy sacks, and a couple of stories on entrepreneurial wonders who are still out there at 68 bashing the corporate world into submission, and of course, looking STUNNING!

It's a complete load of drivel that is assuming that as women age they don't change or mature or have different challenges or interests, they just start dieting to try and keep wearing their size 8 sexy sacks and consequently start looking like they've had a sex change and are feeling very anxious about it. And that they still really care about celebrities. Really, REALLY?

It's trite, it's underdone, where it does tackle an issue it does so in a trivial and under-researched manner, they've done little but rehash the same celeb crap by simply focusing on the older and more botoxed of the banal bunch - the ones who are getting truly desperate and look it. It's not much more than a pile of puffed up cream cake masquerading as actual reading. Even the middle aged women I know who are still interested in all that rubbish are way more sophisticated than this offering and are unlikely to downgrade to this piece of piffle. They read Vogue. And of course, all the columnists are the same old bunch of horrors they always drag out - Wendy Harmer, Kerri-Anne Kennel, Deborah bloody Hutton, blah, blah, blah. As for the stories, same old, same old, how to be a millionaire, breast cancer survivor, glam gran - all OK but treated in very offhand manner. It feels about as fresh and vibey as last week's prawn shells. And of course, there's pink everywhere.

It is lightweight, patronising, not very interesting and assumes that its readers are the same. This magazine is EXACTLY why there is such a need for a decent mag aimed at middle-aged women who are a diverse bunch. My middle-aged friends are a highly talented and intelligent group of women who have lived full and challenging lives, done all sorts of interesting things, survived all sorts of shit and come out still fighting and who are likely to continue doing so for as long as they are still tottering around the planet - although most of them will  most likely be wearing cute but sensible ballet flats rather than a pair of toe-removing Jimmy Choo's like the celebs in YOURS. Even the title is rubbish. Most middle aged women have spent decades constructing lives around other people, and are mostly bloody happy they have done so when they see the wreck the career treadmill has become for anyone over the age of 45, especially women. The only fucking thing missing was a story on a royal. Perhaps that will be in he next issue - which I won't be buying.

Pet paradise

For some years now Gorgeous George and I have been pursuing "the simple life". Circumstances - for instance having our little business sink underneath us and leaving us in rather a lot of debt - made the decision to cut costs and live frugally a no-brainer. Besides which, GG has always hated too much stuff and is happiest when throwing things out rather than buying them. I've had to work a bit harder at it, but there are definite signs of improvement, both in terms of clutter and debt reduction.

But one aspect of our lives has stubbornly refused the cost-cutting razor, and it's the pets. Our daughter, the Boho Babe was always a bit of a pet collector while she lived at home, and I am a soft touch when it comes to the sight of a soft cuddly pet-type animal in need of a family. Which has meant, of course, that we have ended up with three cats and a dog and the Boho Babe has grown up and moved out.

One of the cats, Dreydis, is an eight-year-old Burmese with a surgically reconstructed pelvis as a result from being hit by a car. He also suffers from asthma and sounds like a reformed smoker. He actually belongs to the Babe, but after she moved out, he stayed with us because our other cat, Fred the Tonkinese would "fret without him".

Fred is a talking Tonk, meaning he yells and screams like a toddler having a tantrum unless he is actually asleep on a lap. The Babe suggested we get a Tonk after our own Burmese was hit by a car because they "combine the best of a Burmese and a Siamese". Total twaddle, he has all the neurosis of a Siamese and is as needy as the worst Burmese. He is a challenge, to say the least. Luckily he adores Gorgeous George and GG adores him, so they are a match made in hell.

Boo, our ancient Persian cross, was also the Babe's acquisition, when he was a tiny seven-week-old charity cat. He is still with us, 16 years later, scratching the timber door frames to shreds and abusing all and sundry just because he can.

Finally there is Bertie, a white, furry, mostly Maltese cross who is going on 11 and who cost us an absolute fortune after being hit by a car, strangely enough driven by an ambulance officer who kindly drove me and the mangled pup to the vet where he was patched up to the tune of many thousands of dollars. That was many years ago, but now his cruciate ligaments in both legs have gone and require pretty frequent medication and he has mild heart disease and a hernia.

And on days like today, when the rain is bucketing down and they are all inside and glaring at me, except for Fred who is actually running around and yelling, I think maybe not having pets would be a sensible move.

And then Bertie struggles over on his poor sore legs and puts his head in my lap and looks up at me with his big, brown eyes and I promptly resolve to spend a bit more money on injections and pain-killing meds for him and some nice clean litter so the cats don't have to go out and get wet.

Sorry GG, the money has to come from somewhere. Sardines on toast for dinner, again. The simple life, right.

Seasonal slump

Gardening is something I have been doing since I was only four or five. My first effort was weeding out a bed in my parents' rambling and overgrown garden to plant some pansy seedlings. They didn't just grow, they flourished. After that I was given a packet of seeds and that was that. An addiction was born. While my friends were collecting dolls, I was grubbing around in the dirt trying to grow things.

I was lucky, I suppose, because I had a gardening granny who had lots of gardening granny-type friends who were very tolerant of a small five-year-old stalker following them around as they gardened asking them questions about what they were doing.

My parents, on the other hand, weren't noted for their horticultural gifts. My father, though able to grow many things, approached gardening with the same attitude he applied to most things in his life - a kind of out-of-control bomb blast behaviour that sometimes produced results but more often than not just left a whole heap of rubble for the rest of the family to clear up.

My mother was keen, but clueless, with a tendency to lose focus half way through a project and end up parked somewhere comfy with a cup of tea and a book. It made her a great mum and very well-read but not so much of a success around the shrubbery.

Over the 30-plus years Gorgeous George and I have been married and making homes together, there have been several gardens, each getting a little more quirky courtesy of my expanding knowledge and a tendency to botanical curiosity leading to expanding collections of plants. Our current garden sports a number of sub-tropical plants that should struggle in this part of Sydney but which are starting to romp along and a proliferation of succulents colonising pots just for a start.

But this last season has been dry and far too hot much too early in the season. The vegie garden has sulked, the lemon threw its fruit away, the cottage flowers shut up shop and a clever little red-flowering eucalypt hailing from Western Australia burst into bud and then keeled over in the wind. But that hasn't stopped the frogs. They have flourished and adopted the Alcantarea imperealis as their home. The frog spawn has hatched and there are tadpoles living there now - and I didn't have to travel to South America to see it. I am a proud gardening gal and looking forward to being a gardening granny.

How much!!

Just last week I read yet another one of those articles telling us that to retire on a modest $100,000 a year, we're all going to need $1.5 million in superannuation.

Say what! Has it escaped the notice of these financial worthies that the average income in many families is well below that and likely to stay that way. Hell, in some households with two people working full-time they wouldn't be making $100k a year. And while we all like to moan about how flipping hard it is to get by, and how we're all doing it tough, and life isn't fair and life would just be OK if we could afford blah, blah, blah (even I have been known to have a teeny tiny grizzle about such matters) I reckon much of it is a load of tosh designed to keep us miserably plodding on the treadmill and spending money on stuff we don't want or need to make us feel better about being flipping miserable. Even Gorgeous George who has always loved his job and has always said being in paid employment is the way he wants to spend his retirement is starting to find the wonderful world of work a little tarnished lately.

I understand that the baby boomers - and I'm supposed to be one even though I dispute it at the top of my lungs every chance I get - are a fabulous lot and expect to be wearing designer clothes, taking expensive holidays and eating out at restaurants a LOT in retirement, but to the tune of $100,000 a year, every year? Perlease. I can hardly get up the enthusiasm to order takeaway Chinese more than every couple of months.

And haven't they heard about getting old. I know it's a dirty word, but with the best will in the world, the outcome of a well-lived life is supposedly a long one, And even if I start running 10km a day instead of occasionally managing 5km, I can't see me dashing overseas three times a year and drinking a bottle of champagne every day when I'm in my 90s. Not unless someone gets very clever with the gene splicing and all-body botox.

Gorgeous George and I have been simplifying and reducing for as long as I can remember, even before I was shoved out of paid employment like the weekly garbage. And maybe because we had already started the process, we had enough savings and the skills to survive on one wage that doesn't even make it to that supposedly miniscule 100 grand they like to talk about.

And we live very well and happily thank you. We can even go on the occasional holiday and socialise sometimes. OK, I have to cook most meals from scratch and the weekly cleaning and ironing is also done by little old moi. But strangely enough, I don't mind it too much - well mostly - because it's good, honest work and it makes my life and my home feel pretty darn pleasant. Just as pleasant as it would be spending countless hours hanging around in airports and trying to call home to check that the pets were all happy and well and that the kids were OK.

Anyways, I just think it's a bit fanciful to believe that we're all living that life or even striving to attain it. And I sure as shooting don't see what the point is of working till you're 80 in a job you no longer love or even like - if you ever did - just to ensure that you can live a terrific retirement that might not last very long at all.

Nor am I suggesting people don't work, or strive to achieve or be ambitious. But having been one of those busy, busy people I know it doesn't always last, you often don't get thanked, and if the only way you can enjoy yourself or feel you are living a meaningful life is to spend, spend, spend, then chances are you're gonna end up in the poop.

So maybe take some time to smell the flowers instead of buying those shoes you'll only wear once.

The romance is gone

I'm obviously romantically challenged. It's almost Valentine's Day and I haven't bought a card for Gorgeous George or spent loving hours making heart-shaped cookies. Nor am I expecting a lovely bunch of red roses flown over from Israel or South Africa or wherever because the weather in Australia has been so challenging that the roses grown here this season all have short, stumpy stems. Seems even roses are subject to our obsession with being tall and slender - not good news for those grown along more solid, ground-hugging lines.

Every year my sister gets a bunch of yellow roses from her beloved hubby, even though he could be sometimes charitably be described as a little on the grumpy side and they have been married for 30 years. But Gorgeous George has always manfully resisted the pressure to give in to the "arrant consumerism" of the day and just gets on with business as usual. He uses the same inescapable logic to explain why we have also never celebrated Mother's Day. Sadly I totally understand. If we had a spare $30 I'd much rather spend it on making a nice lunch for the Babe and the Geek or buying a bottle of champagne to drink on a sunny afternoon in the garden I spend so much time slaving over.

So instead of buying more stuff, I'll celebrate valentine's Day by weeding the vegie patch, using up the black bananas in the freezer to make a cake and trying to discourage the cats from using Gorgeous George's favourite chair as a scratching post. The $30 Gorgeous could have spent on roses will go towards buying me a lawn mower. That's real romance.