I'm not on here as often as I used to be, but I do check in and read from time to time. Our lives have changed a bit, but I still recommend this site to people. The Aussie situation is not too different from the US one. We have resources we can call on, but we need to know about them and know how to plug into them. With government changes, we're seeing some considerable watering down of past successful programs. Never forget that no matter how good things might seem with one government, no matter how well your country seems to be doing - it can be undone very fast.
Where we're all at - the sig tries to tell it all, but it is struggling.
husband & I now live with mother in law in her home. She is frail, elderly but compos. Our own home is a short walk away but we only see it on average once or twice a week. It is a mess. But mother in law can't fend for herself. She's nursing home material but would not survive in a nursing home. For years we've been going form our place to hers for dinner every night, to make sure she had one decent meal a day. But a year ago we moved in when it became clear she could not manage alone.
The kids - easy child lives in Canberra, 3 hours drive away, with her husband and two kids. Baby Grand 1 is now 2 years old and she's a bright little button. Baby Grand 2 is 6 months old and the little boy is adored by his big sister. I don't see them often enough, but we're too tied down to travel to see them. We don't have space to put them up any more either, which makes it even more difficult.
difficult child 1 is married - never thought that would happen. He and his wife live with her father, rattling around in a huge house. difficult child 1 is still an invalid pensioner due to his Asperger's, but our Social Security system means he can earn an income as long as he tells social security how much he earned and when. They simply stop payment on his pension when he earns over the limit. When his income drops again, he gets pension payments again. daughter in law is not well herself, is studying at uni but spends a lot of time in bed recovering from the effort of attending classes. She is getting excellent grades though.
easy child 2/difficult child 2 is also married - the three eldest kids got married within one 12 month period. She and her husband live at our house. Having them move in, especially with husband & I living with mother in law, has meant a lot of our stuff has either been put in storage or disposed of. They have a baby boy, Baby Grand 3, who is now 4 and a half months old. We see them most nights when they come down to mother in law's for dinner.
difficult child 3 is now 20 years old. Can you believe it? He never finished school, it became obvious that it was going to be a lost cause to force the issue. He completed his school subject stream in Information Technology but nothing else. His school IT course also plugged straight into a post-school study option we have here called TAFE - Technical and Further Education. He has now completed a further course in IT and has one more level of study to go with TAFE. If he then wants to study more, he can use his TAFE achievements to get advanced standing at uni - he could go in at 2/3 year level in an IT course even though he has never graduated from high school. TAFE qualifications replace that need for graduation.
difficult child 3 is also enrolled in a government-based disability education program designed to train him for the workplace. He has a long way to go especially with his social skills. I was taking him to therapist appointments but I can't any more because I can't leave mother in law. difficult child 3 lives at our house and in our absence is far less motivated to clean up his hoard of computer games and the world's largest Nerf collection.
Me - I'm still trying to work on my writing but I don't get as much time as I need because I need large chunks of uninterrupted time and I can't always know when that will happen. I've had a resurgence of activism activity.
And - big news! I had a lovely visitor on Sunday. Esther from Jerusalem! All the way from Jerusalem! Oh, we had such a lovely day. Her son brought her over from where she's staying with him, and then he and his friend went to the beach for a swim. Later on Esther and I went to my favourite beach - turned out that was where her son also ended up. But we missed each other in passing. husband was with us too, Esther took his arm on the sloping path down to the beach and exclaimed, "I'm holding the arm of Marg's Man!" My two youngest kids dropped in when we had lunch, Esther also got to hold BG3 who was being adorable as usual.
While I have in the past met once with another CD member (another Aussie who was a member briefly) and talked another friend into joining, Esther is the first CD member from overseas and the first long-term member who has been able to visit us!
I really wish I was able to go collect her and take her for a drive to all the places she wants to see. But where her son lives is fairly central to the best of Sydney and Esther did a lot of careful study before coming here. The weather hasn't been too hot for her, thank goodness, but she has still seen the best we have to offer in weather.
So that's the news from Down Under - we're all still here. I'm now four years post-cancer and still doing well. I'm on Facebook a lot these days too. But CD.com has been a lifesaver for me, and done wonders for the kids.
Thanks everybody.
Marg
It's lovely to read everybody's news.