Don't piss off a small town

or working parents

I haven’t written here in two weeks which is unusual but the last two weeks have been unusual. Nothing major, just 4 to 5 mid-range disasters that have sucked the time out of the week like a toddler with a juice box.

The biggest issue is that our beloved local childcare centre is on the chopping block. The full story is complicated and boring. The short version is that our centre put in an expression of interest to continue our council lease on the building we’re in. The recommendation has come back for a different vendor to take over the building with a new childcare centre from another shire and this to happen in December this year.

The community was not consulted, the assessment matrix was redacted so we don’t even know how they came up with this ludicrous decision. Our centre has been running for 40 years and has been in that building since 1999. The manager started working there as a teenager and now has her daughters working there and a grandchild at the centre. She was the third person I called when I found out I was pregnant with my youngest. If this goes ahead, our centre and the staff will be displaced, and there’s no other appropriate building for us to move to. And the beautiful legacy of our decades-old NFP centre will be destroyed.

So much of my time has been spent writing press releases, annoying the councillors and doing radio interviews.

I tell you what, our little town is fierce as fuck and I’m bloody proud. I’ll give you an update next week.

*Update - we lost. Counsillors voted last night in favour of the new vendor who will offer 87 spaces (we were offering 120), will pay their staff $5 less per hour and charge families $15 more per day. We are devastated, bewildered and very angry. They haven’t provided a single reason as to why they made this decision. Stay tuned.

Reading

Brave New Words by Salman Kahn. It was nice to read something vaguely positive about AI, but it was more focused on education than work. Worth a read though. I also read All Systems Red for book club (the first book in the Murderbot Diaries) and I really liked it. It’s a novella, so it’s short but I really connected with the characters immediately. Tried reading The Stand by Stephen King but I think I need a little more time before engaging in plague content.

Listening

Lucky Boy by Tortoise Media. It’s about a boy in England who was abused by his female teacher in the 80s. It’s a great exploration of how societally, we treat men who are abused by women very differently than we do the inverse. The title says it all - Lucky Boy. In brilliant news, I’ve managed to get my eldest daughter hooked on Queen so I can tick that off the bucket list.

Watching

Finished off the 14th season of Call The Midwife. I will watch every episode they make of this show and never stop wishing for a Chummy cameo. Nor will I ever recover from the tragedy that she is not a real midwife and was therefore not available for my own births. We also watched Devil in the Family - The Fall of Ruby Franke. My tolerance for family vlog channels and people who exploit their children is in the basement.

Wearing

Osei-duro dress (I got mine half price!), Rollies shoes and my panther necklace. We got all gussied up and went to the Ox and Hound for dinner sans kids. It was so lovely. Hot tip - book ahead and say if you’re GF and they’ll make the most amazing gluten free bread you’ve ever tasted. They were so kind and sent Ben home with the leftovers.

Eating

Tuna fritters in the air fryer. My kids smash them, it’s wild. It’s basically a 425 gram can of tuna, 4 eggs, half a cup of cheese, half a cup of breadcrumbs and then whatever flavours you want - onion, garlic, cute herbs. Then I pop half-cup size patties in the air fry for 15 mins and serve with a greek salad. Dinner of champs. I also went to Melbourne for work for a few days and managed to snag a fun dinner out with one of my favourite humans. We went to Robata and it was bloody charming. We had prosecco, karage chicken and the mochi ice cream. It was without a doubt the most me dessert. I’m not a fan of cake or baked goods so mochi ice cream is the juice for me. I found these (pictured above) and I plan to hyperfixate on them for the coming months.

Doing

I’m off to Canberra this weekend for my quarterly haircut/see my friends in a play/shop at a decent-sized mall/visit my grandmother trip. My schedule is pretty jammed pack but should be a fun lil’ trip.

As always, thank you for reading and leaving all those charming comments. I’m spending less time online these days (I’m off Instagram entirely and I only use Facebook for community crap) so it sometimes takes me a while to see and reply to comments but I do adore them.

That’s it! I’ll be back next week.

love

Carly

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