Admitting you're wrong is really smart

I’ll start with a little update on our childcare saga, you can read all about it here.

Basically our local council made a very strange choice to award our ongoing lease to an external childcare provider, displacing our beloved early learning service that has been operating for over 40 years. They’ve redacted the assessment documents, so we have no information on how they made this bizarre decision. The external provider is not in a financial position to provide anything above what we’re currently providing (in fact, it would be less pay for the staff, higher fees for the parents and fewer spaces for the long wait list in our area), so we’re absolutely stumped.

In true council style, they’re digging their heels in. Their process was ‘robust’ and ‘watertight’. They can’t share the process because it’s confidential, but we must rest assured they made an informed and community-aligned decision.

The thing is, they’ve lost us. There are hundreds of us affected by this decision and we won’t ever vote for them again. (Except for the two that voted in support of us - legends 4 lyfe.)

With full sympathy, being on the local council would suck. A few years ago, our council installed a modern bubbler (water fountain for the non-Aussies) in our town because the heritage one has been broken for ages. The heritage one is still there (I think…) and now we also have a functioning one. I thought it was a pretty good solution. I bet you can guess how many people had an issue with this. Modern takeover, disposable society, no respect for history! My friend was laughing about it at a cafe, and someone overheard her and said ‘Shame on you!’ before storming off.

But this isn’t a little tiff over a bubbler; it's about our babies, our families, our staff, and our community. The council has the power to reverse this. They can admit they didn’t have the necessary information to make the right decision, and now they do. It would be that simple to win us back.

Like when millennial women collectively apologised to the world for our internal misogyny that made us be really mean to Anne Hathaway. God, we were such dicks.

I just hope the council realises they’ve lost our respect and support and that there’s only one way to get it back.

Reading

I just finished The Good Wife of Bath for book club and it was a slog. This is very much a me issue because I read silly-fast, so any book with slightly prose-y language slows me down and I get annoyed. It’s a beautifully written book and if I was calmer and more intelligent I probably would have adored it.

Watching

I’m solo-parenting the little one this week while Big Daddy and Big Kid are away. I promised myself I wouldn’t comfort-watch Schitt’s Creek the whole time, so each evening, I’m watching a critically acclaimed feel-good movie I somehow missed when it was released. On Sunday, I watched Tick Tick Boom about Jonathon Larson who wrote Rent. I’m a Rent-head, so I adored the little Rent easter-eggs peppered throughout. Andrew Garfield was epic and it was so lovely seeing Vanessa Hudgens again. As a theatre kid, this song is everything. What a way to spend the day indeed.

On Monday I watched Pride which is based on the true story about a lesbian and gay group in the 80s supporting Welsh minors on strike. The cast is tops - Andrew Scott, Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West - in general just a bloody charming watch. I cried in both of these movies and it’s either because they were brilliant or because I have my period or both.

Photo: Dan Abroguena

Oh shit I just realised I skipped my newsletter last week and didn’t mention The Moors, a fantastic play I saw at The Mill while I was in Canberra. It’s Charlotte Bronte meets Black Mirror, a gothic dark comedy that’s somehow incredibly moving and also wildly silly. It stars Andrea Close who is majestic and Steph Roberts who I would watch sitting still in chair, she’s that captivating and hilarious. There’s a stunning play-within-a-play with Chris Zuber and Petronella van Tienen that’s breathtaking, their chemistry is electric. Rachel Howard is also a stand-out. There’s a posse of women in Canberra with hot comedy chops I’m well acquainted with that usually get all the fun roles, so I’m pleasantly delighted by this new-to-me funny gal. Sarah Nathan-Truesdale does a marvellous job of a ‘straighter’ character amongst the madness of the rest of the cast. It’s directed by Joel Horwood who, I believe, is a stone-cold genius. Eleven billion stars out of ten. Sit in the front row so the big swishy dresses brush past your legs.

Listening

Tick Tick Boom and Rent. Jonathon Larson is my entire personality this week.

Wearing

These Frankie 4 sneakers literally everywhere. I actually hate them, I’m deeply not a sneakers person but my plantar faciitus is demanding not cute shoes. Having said that, I think they’re helping. I’m not 100% but I’m getting better since committing to this Forrest Gump look every day. Sigh.

Eating

Nothing very exciting except I’m on a Skinny Cow bender, which I kind of hate but hear me out. They have these little tubs of ice cream with chocolate sauce and peanuts. I used to live off them in my disordered eating days because portion control! And calorie deficit! The thing is, they’re yummy. I bought some on sale recently and they truly are the perfect after-dinner little something. However, I hate the packaging and name. Hate. I hide them from my eldest, who can annoyingly read now so she’s not like ‘Skinny Cow? What's that? What’s a calorie? Why does the cow have a measuring tape around its waist?’ Raising food-neutral kids has some nuance, and I’m still navigating the existence of ‘diet’ coded food and how to manage conversations around that. But that’s a future me problem. For now, I’ll hide my shame in the outdoor freezer and hope that some other brand makes a similar product minus the ick.

Doing

Fighting the good daycare fight and working really hard. I’m about to go full-time at my job and pause my clients. I’ve been freelancing for 20 years and I’m keen to take a break from the hustle. I’m doing corporate in-house copywriting and strategy and I’m loving it. I’m fully remote, my team is brilliant, the work is fun and the conditions are fab. No complaints here.

On a fun note, my big kid found an octopus in the rock pools at the beach. Such a defining moment, I feel like she’ll remember that forever. He was the same colour as the rocks and was changing his skin (?) as he moved along the crevice wall. Octopuses are male in my head, by the way. Not sure why.

And thank you, thank you for all your lovely comments. I’m going to reply to every single one of them right now.

See you next week!

Carly