My Easter Holidays in Granya

So for the past two years I have gone to Granya for easter with my mum and step dad as well as my aunt and uncle and other family usually comes out for a day trip as well. I have to say if ur looking for an exciting holiday that is non stop activity you wont find it here, no seriously unless ur re-stumping a house (as my uncle and step dad were) you will be sitting around reading a book going for walks maybe play some tennis but mostly a lot of nothing goes on. So why then have i started this tradition of visiting a place with no sewage system and no mobile phone coverage?

Well in the last few years my life has finally calmed the fuck down and i don't doubt that it's because my mum's life has finally setteled and we have become reaquinted with my aunts and uncles, it isn't till now that i have realised what strong, determined women I have in my family and in a way I go to Granya just to let all off that wash over me and hopefully make me a better stronger person.

Oh it's not like we sit around and talk about profound things but i do enjoy the everyday musing's of my family. like the way everyone goes back to traditional roles where the men work all day then come home and the women fuse over having cold beers ready and dinner on the table. So not what my real life is like at all it's all equality and sometimes a little bit of mis-understanding in my house.

One night after the guys had knocked off working on the house and everyone had setteled in with a beer "alfresco" style( it was the word of the week because all of a sudden my step dad and uncle were all posh eating alfresco all the time)when this car pulled up out the front on the wrong side of the road for starters, then when the guy who started comming over no one recognised as a local (there's only like 20 so it isn't hard to recognise them) everyone was curuois. Then he opened his mouth and out came this yank accent that sent me in a bit of a chuckle cause we must have looked right out of a tourist guide with the australian flag out the front and everyone sitting round with beers looking basically like we didn't shower. Anyway, he had come from "mt. Koozie.." Mt . Kosciuszko is what he was trying to say and threw his crappy australian english we figured he was heading for wodonga and wanted to know direction's being the great helpful people we are no worries mate you go down that road over the bridge..etc then there was the good part he had no fuel and that went like this..

"gas? station ?"
" naah mate you want petrol over here, but there isn't any round here not till you get into to town"

at which point he started looking concerned, guess the kids and wife in the car were a bit over looking at our great sunburnt country.
So my uncle from the most loving part of his heart gave the guy a gallon of petrol and that went like this

"no don't worry about any money you just pour it in yourself"

At which point we were all laughing cause my uncle before he'd cracked a tinny probably would have said no we don't have any fuel, bugger off.

And off our friend the yank went, with a funny picture of his head of those Aussies in the country.

So that was my Easter break, full of what holidays are meant to be filled with family, compassion and beer.

till death do us part?

In Australia 1 in 3 marriages end in Divorce and 29% of people will never marry. My parent's are divorced and have both since re-married, one for over 10 years and the other hasn't been married a year yet. I know couples who have been together for way too long but will never marry because (generally) the guy says both of their parents have been divorced so let's not waste the time and $ on marriage, after all once u live together for a few years, have a kid and buy house it's all the same in a split. (real positive thinking i know)

But for all that i still really believe women grow up imagining the day they get married, for me never getting married would be like never having children, it's just something i expect to be able to do in my life.

A friend of mine who got married about 3 or 4 years ago at the age of 20 is now seperated and to be honest i don't know the reason's and i wonder were they just too young or was it just not ment to last? Taking age out of the equation there are plenty of married couples i know that i really wouldn't consider the perfect couple, it's hard to know what a relationship is meant to be like and good examples to compare too are few and far between in my world. And i swear if anybody compares their relationship to a movie or a tv show couple i will find u and slap u, it's so far from the real world that ur just asking to be disappointed.

It all begs the question why don't marriages work, or better still what is it that makes some last?
I'll let u know when i figure it out.... probably not any time soon.

I have recently moved onto my first big construction site, and it's huge and a touch intimadating when you first walk into the site shed and the morning and there are just people everywhere. But i should really painta better picture with my water colours here, of the 1400 people on site there are at this point some 10 women, i'm ok with that I chose to work in a trade full of men so i'm not fussed about that or the girly poster's on the walls. call it what you want but i'm not a feminist or anti-feminist i just generally don't care all that much.

some of the oh so clever guys have decided that women shouldn't be wearing make on site, i'm not talking about putting on make up like ur going out on the town but the basics, some of the girls like to wear for there own sake not to impress any of the guys.. I should add that generally i don't but that's just me i honestly couldn't be fucked with it, but my point is this do women have to compeletly sacrafice all feminine habbits to conform with the men? or shouldn't they just be allowed to do whatever they like?

It all comes back to why women wear make-up and paint their nails (i add again i rarely paint my nails but again that's just cause i'm hugely lazy), is it for yourself and your own state of mind or is it to impress those around you. And if it is for your own state of mind than is that really healthy shouldn't a woman be comfortabl enough in her own skin to not need to hide behind a layer of stuff? then again my mother awlay's did tell me that i should care what other people think of the way i look, mind you she was probably saying that to get some sort of balance from my i couldn't give shit attitude.

I vaguely remember studting some feminist stuff at uni and something did come to mind about all this who -ha third wave feminism and post-feminism saw the acceptance that women aren't one image they are contradictory and have different views but also that women now take feminism for granted kind of like why would i burn my bra when i actually like wearing it - it's my favourite one! so instead of the great push that women shouldn't wear make-up for the male dominated audience instead we wear it for our own benefit, and yeah i want to work in a male dominated trade but that doesn't mean i should have to sacrafice being a woman!

Anyway i say just do whatever you wantand be totally awesome!