Jeremiad on a looming breach.

DH has failed to apply for the full 8 jobs this fortnight. She couldn't force herself. She could not satisfy that dour and socially disconnected male deity, the Protestant Suit-God Melocha, and his representative here on earth, that puling, creeping piece of banality-of-minor-evil, John Howard

Here is what she did over the last 2 weeks, and what the life of a real flesh and blood woman and carer looks like, unlike some bloodless unit of production in the mind of some H R Nicholls Society dweeb, to be shunted around like some robot. Try shoehorning this into a desk job, or, here's a good idea, why not make DH stand at the checkout at Woolies for a 6 hour shift to redeem her debt to society. How about it? Is what follows not worth $125 a week?

7 amateur musical performances over the weekends, bake cakes as gift to cast members, bump out the production, sleep off the accumulated exhaustion, coping with post-production blues, of self and especially daughter, struggling with her own conscience to defend a disabled person with a neurological disorder from hell from the bullying of her exasperated fellow cast members, risk being tarred with the same brush, have mixed results, feel like a failure, deal with the emotional fallout and depression, spend several hours on the phone dissecting the micro-economics of bullying and power with other mothers within the disability community, doing after all women's "work" of binding community together in a network of talk and analysis, accompanying friend who has just discovered newborn daughter has a neurological disorder to Westmead to hear the prognosis, support her through the emotional fallout of that, attend the final day of a course on computer graphics, and spend another day practising her new skills lest she forget them, doing 2 hours paid work, and spending 7 unpaid hours brushing up her skills to do it, , sleeping off a viral infection after weeks of coughing, and aching joints, and no, damned if she's going to go begging to some gate-keeping son of a doctor's mother, to get a certificate, wake several nights weeping over unrequited loves, console herself with some timely advice from Germaine Greer, attend meeting with a social worker trying to help her daughter move out of a life of almost complete isolation, and arrange action plan, accompany daughter on long trip to distant TAFE which has a suitable course for her, attend inaugural meeting of her local community's "Ways and Means" committee, take minutes, babysit and adore new goddaughter, attend community-building workshop run by local council, attend party political meetings, clean the house, tear hair out at inability to create a system that works with all the goddam paperwork (see picture), try and find time for at least one good latte and chatter, visit mother at nursing home, spend 1/2 hour each day on phone to mother, tear hair out at constantly losing keys and glasses and inability ever to find ringing mobile in handbag shell game, wage bitter political battle, and lose, in group she helped found, deal with emotional fallout of that, and of course, exercise, cook, clean, shop, garden, worry about money, including feeling rich on counting up the contents of the silver coin jar, and finding still have $11 left till pension day 5 days hence, which augmented by $25 food voucher, and approx $30 overlimit credit she might will just about get her through, upgrade her resume (a day's work in itself), register with seek.com, apply for several jobs, each of which take at least an hour and more, ring around, do tax returns, build Aussie Mateship social capital by smiling benevolently on trainful of yobbos from Qld come for the NRL grand final and pretending to give a damn about who wins, and of course, working on this blog, which is DH's work of art after all, and attempt to speak for other sole parent housos who are struggling to have some kind of a life with their kids, and stay afloat under the punitive depredations of Howard and co's "Workchoices" which are no choices at all.

What more can they ask of any human being?