About six inches below the bread line

I'm thrilled to announce I have my first paid writing job.

I spent two hours the other day writing an article, taking some original photos and submitting it (you can read it here).  For that I will earn $1.25 a month for the next 24 months.

Yes, you read that correctly.  $30 over the next 2 years. Score.

You see, Mr Sensible came home the other day and suggested in his rather off-hand way that maybe I should get a job.  Well, he didn't say it quite like that, he merely pointed out that Young Aunty was earning a respectable income tutoring students at university and I was.. well, earning nothing.

So I did what any self-respecting job seeker should do, and I sought on Seek.  Incredibly enough there were three positions for writers in Perth, and since I had no experience in the finance sector and didn't want full time work, the only one remaining was a reviewing position for Weekend Notes (no, I hadn't heard of it either).  Their basic premise is: do something on the weekend and write about it. 

So I applied, I was accepted and now I am their 16th ranked writer (not bad since I was ranked 56th when I first started... my first piece must have been a hell of a good one).  My goal is to get in the top 10 within 8 weeks (apparently they get offered the free stuff to review). 

So here I am, finally, a honest to god, paid writer.  Now I figure all I have to do is write another 199 this week and every week thereafter, and I will be earning a decent wage.

*****
The more people who read my stories the better my ranking will be, so feel free to swing by once in a while and see what I am writing about.  I have just submitted a piece on birthday parties for kids, with any luck it will be up in a couple of days.

Oral Delivery

The Blonde Bombshell is almost as preoccupied with 'another baby' as I am.

She keeps coming out with random little comments: on the way to Kindy, in the bath, at the dinner table.  I am not constantly talking about having another child, although if she brings the topic up, I am happy to discuss it with her.  But only briefly, as her sense of time at the age of 4 is completely non-existent and I don't want to spend the next 9 (or 12 or 15) months listening to 'is the baby coming today?'.  She talked about being a baby 'last week', most things happened 'yesterday' (including Christmas), and 'next week' when she is 18 she will be 'painting her hair red like Mummy's'.  You see my point?

So last night on the way to the bath, as she was dancing around in her knickers with a wand in one hand and doll in the other I had to laugh when she stopped suddenly and faced me.

'When I was a baby I growed in your tummy, didn't I?' she asked.

'Yes, when you were a baby you grew in my tummy,' I said, thinking she's a tad too young for a biology lesson comparing the stomach and the uterus.

'And then I came out your mouth,' she told me.

What?

I paused for a second weighing up my options.  What was worse: allowing her to think that babies were born via the mouth, or trying to explain which orifice they actually did come out (or in my case, needing to be sliced open and having the baby pulled out).

In the end, the conversation was cut short by the timely arrival of husband, and I breathed a sigh of relief.  However I realise that it is inevitable that she will mention it again, and not only will we need to discuss how the baby gets out of Mummy's tummy... but also how it got in there!

Things My Children Told Me

'I like your bottom, Mummy.  It has hair on it', the Blonde Bombshell told me thoughtfully last night as we dried ourselves from the shower.

'Thankyou,' I told her, not entirely sure what response was warranted under the circumstances.

As I watched her hop from bathmat to bathmat to collect her pyjamas (one piece at a time), and then sit on the floor to wiggle into her Buzz Lightyear knickers, legs in the air, completely uninhibited, I smiled at the priceless little gems she offers me.

As a long-term researcher I write everything down. A decade working and studying in the university system has set me up well, and since I have long learned the fallibility of my own memory, I counteract my forgetfulness by jotting everything down.  This way they become recorded memories, rather than lost moments.

I have decided to start collating these into a book, so that one day you might see a copy of the following on the shelf of your local bookshop:

I like your bottom, Mummy.  It has hair on it.

Things my children told me

by Shannon Meyerkort

What do you think?