Did you get a grass cut? No, I got 'em all cut!

Continuing my little interest into the news and parental/child issues, today I'm going to talk about a news article I read recently about a young boy who got into trouble mowing lawns.

What's that? In trouble for mowing a lawn? I hear you cry. But Lucky, don't we want our kids to get off their screens and go outside and do something wholesome? I don't understand!!
Fear not, my friend. Let's explore this together.

Our story is set in the delicious sounding Maple Heights in Ohio, America. The plucky protagonist is Reggie Fields and his aptly named lawn mowing business Reggie Boyz Lawn Service. This is a business he started in the holiday to raise some of that much needed cash. I think we can all relate to that.

It's kind of refreshing to see a twelve year old kid doing this hard work instead of just vlogging or becoming a wannabe Instagram git. Wow, do I sound old and bitter or what?

Anyway, the story comes to a crux when young Reggie accidentally mows over the border.
Wait, that that makes it sound like he crossed into Mexico - what I mean is that he accidentally trimmed over a boundary and into a neighbour's territory. This neighbour called the police.

There are so many ways to look into this story. The first thing I personally thought of was the ridiculous track record America has for unnecessary police calls. Actually, let's face it a lot of countries apparently have a misunderstanding about what this line is for.

In the News: Landmark rights granted

The Brisbane Supreme Court has been in the news recently because of a landmark decision where a Toowoomba based woman has been granted the right to use the sperm of her deceased partner to make a baby.

Ayla Cresswell had been in a relationship with Joshua Davis for three years and like many couples, they had goals and aspirations about getting married, buying a house and starting a family.
Sadly, Mr Davies took his own life in 2016 without any apparent warning signs.

After speaking to his parents following the incident about how she wished she was pregnant, Mr Davies parents decided to help Ms Cresswell get an urgent court order for removal of sperm, which was approved and removed approximately 48hrs after Mr Davies passed away.




The court had heard about Ms Cresswell having the full blessing and support from both Mr Davies and her own family  for this, as well as the support of a lot of Mr Davie's friends who provided evidence that they were aware of his desire for children.

'Joshua told me that he was very excited at the prospect of being a father, and we often talked about having children, and the effect it would have on our lives,' Ms Cresswell told the court.

In one of my favourite comic books 'Strangers in Paradise' - there's a similar sort of situation in which David is revealed to be dying. He recently got together with Casey - who had been pining after him for years. She is devastated and worried that with him gone, she may forget the sound of his voice. She wants to give him a child who can grow up to learn how wonderful her father was but due to past issues, she's unable to conceive a child. Their mutual friend and protagonist Katchoo readily volunteers for the job so the child will be born out of their mutual love. 

So obviously it's a little different but you get what I mean. This child represents a legacy, and a fulfilment of the life the couple dreamed of together but now can't accomplish side by side. I think it's normal to wish for something like that, especially in the wake of something so tragic. 

Soul Refresher

Last weekend I went to church for the first time in a while.

I wouldn't describe myself as overly religious, but I do try to go every now and then. As I do shift work, that usually makes it harder. I used to go every week as a child, with my family.
It was kind of nice to have a routine like that, a chance to sing, see my grandparents and get out of the house. Sometimes we'd go out for dinner/lunch after.

I still remember someone saying to me after I left school that 'I didn't have to go to church anymore.' and I was like.. if I don't want to go, I won't go. If I do want to go, try and stop me.


That and the kids complaining about religious classes and having to attend mass in school... bro, you enrolled in a Catholic school..what did you expect?
Also, I have little patience for people who get their newborns baptised purely for the photo opportunity and for no other reason.

The church in my local used to be pretty run down and homely but they've spruced it up a little with new seats and a fresh lick of paint. Sometimes if we were travelling, we'd pop in to a different church or occasionally a cathedral. I always felt out of place in the expensive looking ones, preferring the local one.

I was shocked at how few people there were at our session, compared with when I was a kid. It was early in the morning though, so that could be why.

Now, while I have faith and try to be a good Roman Catholic - I also employ common sense.

I'm not going to take a passage from any of the books word for word or extremely literally because I don't think a vast majority of them are super relevant anymore. Bearing in mind that this is a book that's been taken from word of mouth, sometimes several times and then written down and then translated all over the world. Many, many years ago.

What I try to do is take the important bits - for example the ten commandments or any good moral - and live by them or by example of people I look up to, like the kind priests and nuns I grew up with at school and in the parish or family members.

The reason I'm talking about religion is because of all the talk and comforting/confronting posts you see following a miscarriage.

Namely: 'God had a plan for the newborn' or 'if God exists, why does miscarriage exist?'

My So Called Results and other anomalies

Today we got the results of the....  I don't even know what you call it. Would it be considered an autopsy? I'm not sure.

Anyway, we got the results.

Not sure how I feel about it?

Basically my doc said there's good and bad news.

The good news is, it's not any malfunctioning chromosomes. It doesn't look like it's a thyroid issue or anything to do with my hormones.

The bad news is that we don't know why it happened, just that it happened.

Which leaves me like.. well.. okay.

It's great that there's no obvious cause because it means we're healthy and can pass as normal functioning human persons. It sucks because there's nothing we can work on in the meantime?
Obviously we're still trying to get fitter and healthy but still.





I spent the rest of the afternoon sort of in shock after the phone call like.. I think in my mind I was thinking this would give me the answer as to what caused this living nightmare but it didn't. Now I'm just sitting here like a stunned mullet or a pork chop...or the next best food related analogy.

Thinking about food too much now. 

Exercising the Inner Demons

Today is a bad leg day, but overall I think I'm doing great. My husband and I have started a health regime and we're sticking to it admirably. I've lost nearly 5 kilos in two weeks, something my thyroid would have laughed at if you'd told me I could do this before.

Everyday I've been walking, running, using gym equipment. I keep getting spammed by gyms for membership applications but honestly, I prefer to be by myself mostly when I exercise so I'm ignoring them. Particularly the ones that won't tell me their fees. Suss as all hell.

A voucher for $200 off makes me cringe. I paid less than $200 for a year at my last gym, what the hell is the real price if that's the discount??

Plus when you do shift work, it's hard to make it to the gym regular like.
Especially when assholes keep cancelling the gym classes you like most.

Step and Konga for the win. That's all I'm sayin'.



Normally I take my Ipod with me when we go walking. For one thing, it tracks my steps and things, and for another I find music is a pretty powerful motivator. I have different playlists for whatever I'm doing. At first, hubby found it annoying because he thought I couldn't hear him but when we go walking together I have the tunes turned down and I normally play instrumentals.

I can't tell you how much better most songs sound without their idiotic lyrics.

I don't go walking around my suburb without hubby though, while we have a great time together we have discovered that the people who live around here are weirder than we first thought.
Some are okay, a week ago Friday we were on a more lengthy walk where I tried running but it hurt my legs too much to continue. Then we came across a nice lady who had lost her dog. Moments later, we spotted it so hubby ran to try to catch it or at least get it off the road (thankfully cars had stopped) and I ran about three minutes down the track to catch up to the lady to let her know.

Once I started running full bore, and with a purpose, I couldn't be stopped. Until I stopped, and then I couldn't breathe. The point was, I did it when I didn't think I could and the pain was present but nothing too extreme.

Mmmm....Other's Day.

Cruelly falling on Mother's Day this year, was the one month on from the miscarriage.

So, that right there was fun. I'd unsubscribed from most of the baby-centric emails to save myself some heartache but I got bombarded with emails from every company under the sun pushing pink coloured Mother's Day crap on me.

Seriously, they're all aiming now. Fast food restaurants, clothing stores, pop culture shops, fishing stores, car accessories, the local council, gyms... anyone and everyone was like "Hey! Did you know it's Mother's Day and they're like, the best people in the world? Don't you think you should buy them a dinner pack/a new shawl/a Wolverine statue/a freshly spooled reel/a wrench/ an education about a local government initiative or a gym membership?"

I'd expected it but it felt like it was Christmas again and I was the Grinch - trying to avoid it but ultimately being dragged into the thick of things. And.... maybe a little green.

How did I combat this? Well, hubby and I slept in. Yep. We did nothing productive until about 11am when our stomachs rose up in protest together and suggested brunch before all the rioters passed out.

Panda had a big brekky while I said "Flip the darn table, I'm having waffles and ice-cream! ....and a strawberry smoothie!"
Other tables had choccies on them, and older ladies with flowers. Not sure if you had to book to get the choccies or if they only give them out to mother. I don't know how you know though.

Last year for Father's Day, Panda and my younger brother K-Dog were given gifts, and literally no one asked if they were dads. This time, people seemed happy to ignore Panda and I. I don't blame them, looked like it had been a busy morning for the waitstaff.

A letter for our baby

Coming up to Mother's day and finding myself not fitting into that category, now being more of a mmmmmm.... OTHER is a little difficult.

So, as a way of kind of dealing with it, I decided to write a letter to bub.

Dear Baby,

This week, even though we still feel your loss deeply - we have been feeling more positive about life, and the progression of our family. My parents gave us a commemorative coin set - bought and intended as a gift for you when you were born.

A memento helps.. for you there was no funeral, no mourners apart from those who knew.
Photographs and scans are nice.. a tattoo isn't our style and I don't know how else to honour your memory.

The moment we knew you existed, we were so happy. We'd struggled until this point so when you - our one good egg - became life at first go, we were simply overjoyed. It felt like something was finally going right.

The two week wait was agonising. I sat through an audio track of some perfectly enunciated but bored sounding lady talking me though a cliche riddled meditation/nonsense willingly because I was thinking about you.

When I got the phone call (which involved a lot of phone tag, let me tell you!) confirming you were there, and developing well - and had to sit through the rest of the afternoon trying to concentrate on my work without screaming excitedly non-stop. Your daddy didn't want to hear it over the phone, so when I came home I gave him a baby nappy bag with a panda onesie in it without saying a word. He looked up at me and burst into the biggest smile, then gave us a hug.




Everyday he would kiss my belly, kissing you through me until he could do it in person.

I felt so happy that you were there, I kept talking to you like you could hear me, I would sing and amend lyrics, my hand kept straying to my belly to hold you. I looked forward to doctor's appointments and check ups because they proved you were real, and they just made me more excited to meet you.