September 2011 ~ My IdeaLife

My Kingdom for a Kiss Upon Her Shoulder

It's been 18 years since his blood warmed our hearts and his, but his voice remains and still inspires...Read more...

The love of your life

Is it a man, is it a career, no it's superbaby!...Read more...

A lifetime of beauty in a song

Middle East (the band not the place) have somehow condensed the human experience into this soulful song: Blood...Read more...

Superwomen have it all by NOT doing it all

Superwoman really don't exist, it's more like Insanitywoman, so stop pretending and start outsourcing...Read more...

Tuesday 27 September 2011

Is Facebook going bad or moving forward?

As you can probably tell from my smattering of posts about Facebook on every social media network I’m a bit taken with the new Timeline feature. It is so fun and you can read my full rave over at JustB

Status updates 2007-style 
One of the cool things I didn’t talk about though was the hilarity of rediscovering your early posts through Timeline. You remember when the status header always had “Nicole is…”? Which was quite limiting if you were fussy about your grammar (not that I was or am, as you can probably tell). Anyway when I saw these scintillating updates I couldn’t stop laughing. My excuse is Social Media was so in its infancy and we didn’t really know what we were doing, ok so maybe some of you did, but as you can see by the below I had no idea!



Is Facebook trying to own our identities? 
The other side I didn’t really cover was the concerns people have raised about privacy. The good news about Timeline is all your posts come over with their current privacy status, so if you have only ever shared photos with friends, or even a specific set of friends that won’t suddenly change. So the only real issue is that posts from your past are now accessible to you and those they were originally shared with, that is unless you go in and remove them, delete them or change their privacy state, all things you can do.

Nobodies more interesting than Celebrities? What? 
In this age though where sharing is being turned into a source of entertainment, nobodies are replacing celebrities who formerly were the only ones that walked that hallowed ground. The new Facebook changes take advantage of this phenomenon and just bring it up to speed with tools like Twitter and Instagram. People like to be followed and now you can select content from your timeline to make public and then offer yourself up to be subscribed to. That way strangers who subscribe to you can receive your public updates in their news feeds.

The Social Media age 
For many this is great news as it gives one access to a greater audience if that’s what you’re after. The down side is the widening of the potential to make social errors, especially ones that may lead a young person in to harm’s way. But that is the case across many other social media tools already including the very controversial Google+ which insists you use your real name! The answer is the world is changing and we need to keep step with it and educate our children on the amazing potential social networks offer while drilling in to them the dangers and the rules that will ensure their safety.

Facebook Timeline goes live on October 1, but you can try it now by following the instructions here

What do you think? Is Facebook going bad or moving forward?


©My IdeaLife, 2011, All rights reserved

Tuesday 20 September 2011

Crashed and burned: what is it with firemen?

Remember when you used to get really excited when the fire brigade showed up just because you got to perve at all the firemen? It was especially fun at work so you could giggle like a schoolgirl with your similarly deviant colleagues. For me it only seems like yesterday…wait a minute it was only yesterday! Standing in a fire station yesterday with my two year old in my arms I found myself being very friendly with a hot fireman who was kind enough to be showing my son his engine. Now I wouldn’t call it flirting, because people who flirt know what they are doing. What I was doing...well I don’t think there is a word for that. 
Ok ok, so he didn't really have his shirt off, and alright, this wasn't really the one I was
talking to but this does make sense of my foot in mouth situation I think...yes?
Photo: Mosman Daily, Firefighters Calendar 2011
I was just trying to start a conversation that went deeper than “oh look there’s the hose!” with a person that looked as though he had avoided deep conversations successfully since 1995. It went something like:

N: I was a surf lifesaver for a couple of seasons, doing surfboat rowing and I found it really confr…
Hot fireman: Oh yeah, where at?
N: Coogee
Hot fireman: What year?
N: 2002/3 I think…only problem was when I had to treat someone for the first time I completely freaked out
Hot fireman: Did you row in the firsts?
N: No, I came from still water so was still learning in B crew…so I didn’t get my glove on fully and all I could think of was ‘shit I have her blood on me, her blood is on my hand, shiiiiit!’
Hot fireman: was Bec in your crew?
N: Yes she was. So what I’m trying to say is you must be a certain type of person to be a fireman, you know, you have to be so, so, so… Brrrraaaave…


S I L E N C E (that seemed to go on forever)

At this point my brain caught up to my mouth but it was too late, my gushing “Brrraaaave” had exited my mouth and was floating between this stranger and I. I realised I had sounded like a teenage groupie, why did I say ‘brave’? I couldn’t think of the word, which I think should have been selfless, as my mind went blank, probably due to our house and my body being plagued with viruses. All I knew was I had to end my stuttering somehow. And in my defence, they are in fact, brave.

Despite my idiocy and Bang’s intense desire to leave, probably because even at 2 he could see I was going down hill fast, the hot fireman only paused slightly, obviously also a bit shocked at the use of the word and responded graciously: “Well we do a lot of training”.

Phew, awkward moment passed. I managed to salvage some form of self-respect and joked about how my training had only managed to educate me on every disease I could catch from someone’s blood. BUT With Bang yelling “Mama! Mama! I want go home! That way Mama, that way!” I made my escape but not before my “friendliness” earned Bang a Fire Brigade showbag and a sincere invite to come back again soon. Hmmmm “Maybe he likes women telling him he’s brave?...Who cares!” I panicked, “get out of here before your foot gets amputated by your teeth.” Bye Mr brave Fireman.



©MyIdeaLife, 2011, All rights reserved

Monday 19 September 2011

Make it go away Mummy

This past week has been surreal, in fact if I think about it this past year has. Something changed though last Wednesday when my son was diagnosed with pneumonia. I can’t yet put my finger on it but I suppose this post is a way to help me do that.

I feel a bit broken to be totally honest, just watching this little human that just happens to be the centre of my universe, cry out in agony while I know there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop it or fix it, is soul destroying. And watching his eyes, that have seen only two years of this world, staring at me, questioning why they are in pain. It is the closest thing to hell on earth.


I can’t imagine what parents who have kids that are seriously ill have to go through, if this is what it feels like when your child has something that modern medicine can fix. I think it’s the helplessness that's the killer. I want to run out and study medicine, but I know that wouldn’t solve everything and would probably reveal how little we actually do know. Basically I need to be Samantha Stevens, when the pain hits I just wiggle my nose.

Witches aside for a moment, this got me thinking about resilience. Our children are going to face pain, and lots of it, and most of the time all we will be able to do is sit by and provide comfort and support. So how does one prepare to be useless in the face of your children’s biggest crises? How do you stop shutting down inside to cope with our own pain at having to watch our angels get attacked and have to fight for themselves?

Unfortunately I have no idea, lately if I don’t run around keeping busy, staying numb, I basically want to scream, “Why does he keep getting sick? Is it my fault? What can I do differently? Surely there is something that can be done?” Our doctors have answered these questions for me and they go something like “He’s in the normal spectrum of illness frequency for his age, it is not your fault, if he didn’t get these infections now he would get them at school, no his diet is good, he’s active and you are using probiotics and supplements and washing his hands, no there’s nothing more than antibiotics if it’s bacterial, immunisation against some real nasties but mostly it’s viral and he will just get over it in 7-10 days, summer is better”. This doesn’t stop my incredulous reaction when after maximum of two weeks good health another feral virus mows my boy down. It also doesn’t stop me blaming myself for pretty much the whole sorry situation.

All I know is I am tired and sad and feeling incredibly sorry for him and myself. I want to take the pain away, I want to wrap him in my arms and shield him from this torturous world. He, of course, is managing having one of the most serious respiratory conditions around like a champion, and other than needing a little more sleep and cuddles, is being his normal cheeky and charming little self.

If only I could be so brave and strong…but maybe screaming when you feel helpless is the best reaction. Aurora, Emma’s mother in Terms of Endearment is her and my hero, and she’s screaming, as is perfectly appropriate when you are watching someone you love more than life itself work through pain.




So if you don’t see me here as often, it’s cause I’m off somewhere helplessly screaming loudly or more often, quietly on the inside.


How do you handle it (or not) when your child is in pain?


©MyIdeaLife, 2011, All rights reserved.

Wednesday 14 September 2011

RU OK? Day: A shadow at the door

My hubby tells me no-one wants to hear about negative things on a blog, “there is enough negativity out there” he surmises. He would be right too, there is, but I wouldn’t be being honest if I didn’t share my dark days with you as much as those where the sun shines in.

In my late teens after a dishonest and quite mean-spirited boy broke my heart, my idealistic and bright outlook changed. Not content to just see me sad he set out to destroy all semblance of confidence and pride I had. I think he did it to make himself feel like a big, strong man in a desperate attempt to cover the fact he was hurting as much as I was.

I don’t know if I was clinically depressed but I turned from being a thin, vivacious and cute 15 year old to a chubby, sad and awkward girl in under two years. And the sadness I couldn’t seem to bounce back from, threw a shadow over everything. It took advantage of the small negatives already imprinted on my brain and then drove them into deep rivers of blackness that flooded out all the positive patterns that used to co-exist alongside them.

Even my triumphs were stained grey with illogical assumptions. And thoughts spill into behaviour, where you look for evidence to prove your inner beliefs of worthlessness. It is warped, it is powerful and although it only exists in your mind it is very real and sometimes fatally destructive. And that is why contrary evidence is so important in these types of cases. A kind word, an honest ‘how are you?’ or an unconditional acceptance can go along way to challenging this kind of blackness.

I was lucky, my life took a new turn when I went overseas and I was able to rediscover my former vibrant self. I was also extremely fortunate to never have considered suicide, but so many others are not so. Suicide is a leading cause of death among young people aged 15-24 years and claims more Australian lives each year than car accidents. Maybe without supportive friends, a rowing crew and an ever-present black journal I may have been amongst them.

So tomorrow why not take a deep breath, be brave and ask someone the question; Are you ok? And if you do, maybe, just maybe, that kindness may challenge their negative point of view of the world if only for an hour. But if you catch them at a particularly dark moment it may give them that crucial reason they're desperately looking for to hang around. 


RU Ok ? Day is September 15 – asking could change a life.


Need help now - click here or call Lifeline on 13 11 14
or 
Suicide Call Back Service on1300 659 467
Planning a conversation - click here

©MyIdeaLife, 2011 Original sketch by Nicole McInnes, All rights reserved.

Tuesday 13 September 2011

Hello my name is Nicole and it's been 6 hours since my last...Garbage Truck sighting...

Who's the nutter with the stop sign?
Today I found myself doing something I would never have imagined 2 years ago. After having a grown-up meeting with a colleague to talk about my return to work next year, I stopped to stare at a digger. Not content with just witnessing its mechanical genius myself I pulled out my iPhone and started videoing it in action.

This surreptitious manoeuvre not surprisingly caught the eye of the workman who started yelling at me – at first I thought they were flirting, (the wishful thought of a deluded mind), so I yelled back “It’s for my son” and when he answered “he’ll get more of a kick out of it if he sees you in it” I realised the guy was asking whether I wanted to be in the shot. Relieved at my mistake, no really, I handed over my iPhone like an excited teenage girl and started giggling in front of a moving digger.

You see garbage trucks, diggers, dump trucks, tankers, fire engines, excavators, road graders, street sweepers, cranes, cement mixers, grocery trucks, ambulances, big rigs, b-doubles and police cars are now the coolest things in the world. I have been brainwashed by my two year old and I can’t let one pass now without saying “Whoa look!” which can be embarrassing if you are not in the company of two boys under 2.5.

This obsession saw me; run with a double pram about a kilometre to see a fire engine parked in the distance (we got there!), get stroppy when we couldn’t stop to photograph an excavator because we were going to block traffic and get illogically excited about travelling (very slowly) on arguably the busiest, most truck-ridden road in Sydney. And now we can add stopping road works to my repertoire just so as to rush home and share the big digger I saw with my fascinated little boy who undoubtedly will say, “Woooow, look at that!”.
My day is complete, not to mention my life. 

Do you hear a little voice from your backseat say
"Look! Garbage truck! Quick Mummy chase it!"?


©MyIdeaLife, 2011, All rights reserved.

Sunday 11 September 2011

9/11: In their shoes


© DailyMail.co.uk
I saw this picture and thought it was 9/11, it is not, but as I looked at the shoes I immediately felt sad for the thousands that had lost their lives on that fateful day ten years ago. The 2977 people who died had picked out shoes too, maybe with the help of their partner or maybe to spite them. They may have had their children with them, and asked them to stop jumping off the couch in the store. They had thought about the colour, the stitching, the material and the price, what they didn’t know was they were buying the shoes they would die in. 

And that decision to buy those shoes that day, like so many other every day rationalisations, was nowhere in their mind as many came to grips with the inescapable situation they were in. Instead we read of text messages of love and gratitude to partners, parents and children. We hear of stories of life-threatening heroism. We see pictures of sadness, trauma, destruction. Those every day dramas that happily rocked their worlds the day before, the weeks before were dwarfed into insignificance when faced with the end. 

As we look back on days like today I can’t help but feel foolish and a little ashamed, as they probably would too if they were lucky enough to be onlookers rather than victims. I literally spent 20 minutes deciding where to park today. I spent at least 2 hours this week feeling sorry for myself, and I told my husband off for picking up our two-year-old during a night terror instead of comforting him in his cot. I’m not saying that my feelings and decisions are stupid and wrong, I just wish when the small stuff happens that annoys us, the stuff we heap importance on, or that doesn’t make sense to our way of thinking,that we would see it for what it is: insignificant in the long term. 

Instead I wish I knew that if I was about to die I wouldn’t remember that my husband consistently put the whites in with the darks or that he doesn't always put the seat up. What probably would cross my mind would be "I wish I’d said ‘I love you’ more, I wish I’d been kinder and more understanding, I wish I'd spent more time with my kids, and I wish I’d been truer to myself". 

Days like today are precious because they remind us of the reality of our mortality, they give us perspective and inspire us to make more of the life we still have as we remember those that weren’t given that chance. We should stare at this disaster, we should soak in the pictures of grief and loss, we should try to fathom the feelings that would compel people to leap to their sure death and we should cry for them and for ourselves, especially if we are not truly living the life we have. In the end, when all is said and done, no one will remember our shoes, including us. 

As you watch the horror again, don't look away, stare at their faces and pay them tribute by celebrating the life you've been given today and hopefully tomorrow too.


©MyIdeaLife, 2011. All rights reserved. Images remain the copyright of their original source.

Sunday 4 September 2011

He didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it" CB Kelland

My Dad is one of those men who don’t speak much and I’m not sure whether that is why he is so popular or whether it is the easy confidence he exudes, but to know him is to love him. And who was I to buck a trend? The truth is I absolutely idolised him as a child in a way only a daughter can. 

My poor mother was so excited to be having a girl (I have one older brother), someone she could pass on feminine knowledge and ways to, but I turned out a terrible tomboy and was often found under the car with Dad as he showed me how to change the oil or the like. If I wasn’t holding the makeshift electric light over the engine of the car, or passing him a wrench, I was standing on a wooden crate in Dad’s workshop watching him build whatever contraption was needed for that day’s project.

And if you saw this place, inconspicuously hidden under the front verandah, you’d understand why. It was literally a man cave in an epic way with every type of tool you could think of. With the twin wheel grinder and industrial sized clamp front and centre, there were draws of screws, washers, nuts and bolts; every type of spanner, wrench, hammer; and every kind of scrap material from flyscreen to soft lead sheets used to make fishing sinkers of varying sizes. We didn’t need Bunnings in those days, all we had to do was go to Dad’s workshop and whatever you needed was there.

Mum was not a fan of the workshop, it was organised chaos and more than a little bit dirty. And those are two of Mum’s mortal enemies. But I’d venture to say the workshop was just another thing that took him away from her. He was a shift worker for his contracting business and if he wasn’t working, he was fishing, playing his double bass in a ‘70s nightclub or in his dark workshop. I used to long for him to come home as there was definitely not enough Dad time for any of us, especially Mum.

So today, in a time when Mothers still play the primary role in the life of their children I wondered whether it was fair that Father’s got a day, “shouldn’t they just get an hour, it’s good enough for the earth”, I half-seriously considered. Then I thought of my Dad and how he had taught me what electricity is, how to change a tyre, how to hammer a nail so it didn’t bend, the nature of different metals, how to saw wood so the teeth don’t get caught and how to make useful things from whatever we had lying around. And I realised his ever-present patience and generosity to spend hours teaching me things that in the end inspired me to complete a degree in Industrial Design, deserved to be celebrated for longer than an hour.

Even now as I watch him with my two boys I see the same patience and imagination he shared with me, revealing itself again, and like many before them, they can’t get enough of him (only last week Crash, who’s only 11 months old, cried when I took him from his Pop!). 



So despite him being around less when I was young and being much more reserved in the way he showed his love, I knew I was loved and accepted as just me, and not just accepted but adored and empowered. Thanks Dad, Happy Father’s Day.


Why does your Dad deserve to be spoilt all day long on Father’s Day?


©My IdeaLife, 2011, All rights reserved

Thursday 1 September 2011

the sense of change

Words can't really express...

I’d be lying if I said today felt like the first day of Spring, in truth the feeling started in Sydney about a week ago. That incessant chill in the air seemed to leave overnight like an unwanted spirit that had been making the hairs on our neck stand on end for months. 

But it’s more than just the warmth, it’s the smells and something more that’s hard to describe. Like a glitch in the Matrix, barely perceivable but nonetheless definitive in its altered state. This unexplainable feeling of change always makes me nostalgic. 

This time it brought back a wash of memories that seem always to be punctuated by a child’s laughter. At first I thought it was my boys as their giggles are ever-present, but it is a girl’s voice I hear and so I can only assume it is mine. Somewhere on the surface of my brain my own delights must be etched and as the seasons change it is triggered again as if it were only yesterday.

Like the birthday party where Mum made me a Maypole cake and made miniature dresses for the 2” dolls that held the ribbons. Doing backflips into the pool with all the kids in the neighbourhood over. Eating watermelon in the backyard so you could make as much mess as you like. Walking on the shore with Dad and collecting mussels. Climbing trees with my brother, who was always so much higher than me. Or the party where I had my first kiss. Dreamy. 

So the seasons change again and now I watch two new humans giggle and run and explode into the air outside because it’s warm and thick and full of fun they are yet to have. Fun I hope that will carve out memories in their minds. For when the seasons change again and it’s their turn to look back, I hope they do it with a smile.

Do the seasons changing shift your equilibrium?


©My IdeaLife, 2011, All rights reserved