Tailgating a toddler is hard work, so I stopped for a little while.

Wooka, wooka, wooka, wooka.

That’s the sound my helicopter made as it rose into the air above the playground, pitched left towards the grassy embankment and landed gingerly under the covering of camphor laurels. A small boy had been left behind in the centre of the concrete clearing, blissful and oblivious to my departure.

My eldest child is 3-and-a-bit. He can talk well enough to hold conversations with big kids now. He’s inquisitive enough and carefree enough to approach other kids in the playground, even if they are bigger than him and clearly don’t wish to be interrupted by a pipsqueak chiming in on their game. 

Why it's hard to surf after a feed

I have forgotten how to surf.

I used to be quite good at it. I could do it for hours on end, as time seemingly stood still until at last I came up for air realising that I was suddenly hungry or cold. These days I can barely manage ten minutes at a time.

We’re talking internet surfing here. If you ask me, it’s not entirely my fault. The decline in my agility is largely the result of the feeds delivered by a mob of little round-edged squares. Using a secret password, these guys have infiltrated the mini computer in my handbag, which, in medieval times, was once used for calling people. The bosses, Frankie “fb” Baloney and Enzo “Insti” Gramma, have convinced me that I’m no good at it anymore, that I can’t choose my own adventure in cyberspace. Their power is so influential and far-reaching that I now seem to spend 90% of my time online looking at content they’ve arranged for me instead. And I, like a poor sucker paying protection money, thank them as I pay their ever-increasing costs. 

What really happens when role reversal becomes a reality

I’ve just finished my second week back at full time work since Seth was born nearly two years ago. So far, it has been awful.  Forget all that pie-in-the-sky talk about how I will work to support us while Tim will stay at home caring for our son and it will all be fine and dandy.  Turns out it’s not that rosy when it comes time to actually swap roles and responsibilities.

The first day of work was the worst.  For a pretty unemotional person, I was almost in tears leaving home at 8am, kissing my son goodbye and knowing I was no longer his primary care giver.  Are all working mothers evil and insane?, I thought. Because that’s what I felt like.

How to get that fresh New Year feeling all year round

Well it's now four days into the new year and that lovely feeling where everything is new and possibilities are endless is quickly starting to slink away into the dusty corner where it lives for 360 days of the year.

Something about the simple progression of the four numbers we write at the end of the date imparts us all with a fresh sense of wonderment, opportunity and imagination for what we can achieve, not just in the coming months but in our entire lifetime.

In the real world, nothing has changed since I went to bed on December 31st and woke up on January 1st. I still live in the same house, sleep in the same bed and eat the same food. The sun still rises and sets at around the same time and people all over the world still face the same trials and challenges that they faced the day before.

A loyalty scheme that rewards me for being me. It’s a supermarket’s bread and butter.

I just signed up for a supermarket rewards program. 

I hate rewards programs. I joined one in the past, but then I realised I needed 50,000 points to get a $29 blender and it would take me 45 years to accrue that many, by which time I would be 67 years old and could hopefully afford my own blender, not to mention the fact that the points would have expired after the first three years. So I cancelled my registration. I have even come to cherish the two seconds of freedom and wind blowing through my hair as I casually answer “no” when the checkout person asks if I have this or that card.  

Turned 30. Still, it could be worse

I just turned 30. In the week leading up to my birthday I put a colour in my hair, got a facial, and started wearing suncream every day like the beauty magazines advise. All of a sudden my DIY moisturisers (aloe vera, olive oil) just didn’t seem to be doing the job, and my knees hurt when I went for a run. Not to mention when I played netball against girls half my age. The furrow in my brow has signed a long-term lease rather than holiday letting and I am officially ineligible to apply for those competitions aimed at “youth” pursuing artistic or community projects. 

But I can’t be 30! When I look in the mirror I still see the same face I had when I was at uni, the same one I had when I got married. That girl wasn’t 30. I haven’t even learnt how to correctly apply my own makeup, or change a car tyre. Isn’t that something 30 year olds should know?  

What’s more, I’m not convinced that 30 is the new 20. Rather, this milestone looms in my mind like a cliff over which I will tumble and keep on tumbling until I get old. I have visions of myself as a crazy old nanna with muscly Madonna arms, a wrinkly body and my current face, only the skin is all saggy skin so it doesn’t fit properly. On that note, perhaps my mind is already going. 

But that’s all in the future. Right now I have a gorgeous son and a wonderful husband, who also happens to be turning 30 with me. I am comforted by the fact that he finds this event just as irksome as I do. He is noticing marks on the backs of his hands, going to bed earlier, and comments on how regularly he finds himself tuning to Classic FM these days.  

When you’re little, I’m talking primary school little, you have no idea what 30 year olds actually do. Well, it appears they do pretty much the same stuff as 20 year olds, only with higher health insurance premiums. We haven’t got a mortgage, high flying careers, bulging bank accounts or even a will. But we do have a lot of fun. Too much fun for a bunch of 30 year olds, I think. It’s probably best we settled down and started acting our age.  Now where’s that walking stick...