General News
5 May, 2025
A mum's world
After a gruelling 12-week first trimester of tertiary study, my baby girl finally came home for one glorious week of rest.
She faced off the Easter-holiday traffic to drive through the city, over that never-finished ever-changing West Gate Bridge freeway and up a pretty hairy highway which, outrageously, still boasts single lanes for hundreds of kilometres.
She survived and kicked around home enjoying the clean air, our country garden and her own bed.
It was so good to have her around again, standing in the refrigerator with the door open, just staring hopefully in.
I cooked up a storm of course, massive favourite meals chock-a-block full of vegies and meat to fuel her up.
Ja-makin’-me-crazy chicken curry made an appearance, with beef chow mein flying off the shelves and Brazilian feijoada tracking well.
Tiani has missed her mashed potato so she’s pretty easy to please.
We actually ran out of peanut butter, bananas and Nutella with her around – but to be honest, I think I ate most of those supplies – it was just so good to have someone else to blame again.
Being my daughter, my baby girl loves a chat, and she’s terrific at analysing the minor details of life, which is vastly different to her dad who can miss reporting earth-shattering news to me because he’s busy with the big picture; the ultra-mega-wide view, if some of the massive news he’s forgotten to report is any indication.
With our baby being home we started sitting up too late watching many of her favourite movies again, which, when all is said and done, were mostly our favourite movies first anyway – Forrest Gump, anyone?
Her week at home was disappearing quickly as we fondly wrestled her out of our night-time hugs, until suddenly one evening I encouraged her to go out with a girlfriend for dinner and drinks, then the movie at the cinema.
As drinks for a red P-plater means no driving, I dropped her off and dobbed her dad in for the pick-up after the movie.
I calculated a 10pm finish, and I knew I’d be in my pyjamas by then.
The evening progressed well for hubby and me as I impressed him with my knowledge competing in the ‘1% Club’ on telly and he read more of his aviation books while studying for his pilot’s licence.
But it got late: well past 10pm and heading towards 11pm and we had not only completely faded, but he’d fallen asleep in his chair a couple of times.
With both our alarms set for 6am and a full day of work ahead we were feeling our age and I was having vivid recall of the previous 23 years of being on call.
Just as I was sending Kym to bed and finding my glasses we saw the text explaining that Tiani had secured a lift home with her friend’s dad.
Back to the big smoke for her this weekend and a rest for us.