Baby Boomer's Lament

This weekend 2 of the junior Glenquarry Goddesses were at Hens' weekends. One in Melbourne, the other in Marbella Spain. This got me to thinking as I do, how did I miss out on all these things, that are now considered rites of passage now?

It started at breakfast this morning, I was looking at Facebook and saw more pictures from the said Hens' weekend and I said to the Signifiant Other, "how come I didn't have a Hen's weekend!"

BTW,  I made a absolutely fabulous breakfast this morning, if I say so myself! A few years ago I did Michelle Bridges 12 week challenge and one of my favourite recipes from this was the breakfast beans, so I made my own version of that with chill and chorizo, and then added our fresh chook eggs and made a spicy Spanish  beans and baked eggs.

and spring was here, so we dined Al Fresco!

Anyway I digress...

Thinking about the Hen's weekends got me thinking of all the things that weren't invented, or part of the circle of life when I was at that stage. And then I started to think, can I claim all of them retrospectively?

Here is the list I made, and if you have any other things I forgotten please feel free to let me know...

so here's what I have missed out on, and maybe it has had big consequences on how my life has panned out!

There was no such thing as work experience when I went to school. If you wanted to experience work, you left school in Fourth Form  (year 10).  If you didn't want to work,  you went onto 6th form and then University,  AS IT USED TO BE FREE THEN!  Some of my friends took more than 10 years to do their degrees,  and some (you know who I'm talking to here!) are still going....

But I didn't go to Uni until I had to pay, put "L" on my forehead!

So most of friends and I went into our chosen careers without any real idea of what was involved, needless to say most of us are doing something else these days :-)

Schoolies... well, what I can say. That's a week of my life that never happened!  I know some people who came after me at at school,  and Schoolies changed their lives.... literally,  one of the girls I know  of came back from schoolies with a present, that would keep on giving for the next 18 years or so! A baby! 

For all of you who didn't have the Schoolies experience, who's up for a gray haired version some time soon?

Glenquarry Goddess will host a Gray Schoolies,  if the need is there!

Hen's weekends.  This is what I found when I googled it

Hens Party Shop Sydney - MyHensParty.com.au‎

a website just for hens parties!

give me a break and take a look at the number of hits..

About 1,350,000 results (0.39 seconds) 

When I got married back in the dark ages, the only rite of passage for a bride was a kitchen tea. And why? Because we know that women love kitchen gadgets when they are getting married!

 Mine was a tupperware party held on a Saturday afternoon , WITH WINE! 

The Tupperware lady was a bit overwhelmed that we were drinking wine, it was not what she as used to,  but we had a jolly good time! The husbands to be/boyfriends were out the back in the yard having beers and a BBQ. I still have some of that fabulous tupperware from that kitchen tea and glad to say it has now come back into fashion!  

Baby Moons, well I figure I have at least 4 weeks of baby moons owing to me, that I am going to take as soon as I can work out who is going to pay for it!

Baby Bonus! I thought that was the baby you got to take home from the hospital, not the flat screen TV people may have bought!

Paid Maternity Leave, Family Tax Benefits etc etc...I get a bit tired of people bashing the baby boomers, about how selfish we are, how we bought houses when they were cheap etc .. but it's all relative. 

I'm not finished yet, but I'm going to make this a 2 part blog post, so stay tuned for tomorrows list!

Feel free to add to my list you if like!

Road Trip

Last week the Significant Other and I took a "mini break" and hit the road to Ballarat. It was somewhere that we had both wanted to see for a while due to its history and buildings and after watching The Doctor Blake mysteries on the ABC earlier this year we decided to do it for our mid year break.

I love mini breaks, only a couple of days away from home but it can really revive you and I find that it just gives me a bit of a mental health break to get on with the rest of the year. Last year we did our road trip to Bendigo and saw the Grace Kelly Style Icon exhibition so this years road trip had a couple of things in common with last year. 

I planned our trip around getting to see the Hollywood Costumes in Melbourne, and having spent a lot of time in Melbourne before we felt we could get by on a day trip, so we planned to stay in Ballarat and then catch the train into Town on the day we had tickets for the exhibition.

It's great to get out and see regional Australia and see how life fares outside of the capital cities. One little town we love to stop at for morning tea is Gunning, so if you are in the vicinity I can highly recommend the Merino Cafe which also has the best caramel slice I have ever tasted!  

Meeting the locals

Selection of tasty cakes at the Merino Cafe

A couple of hours later and it was lunch time, so off the highway and into Albury we went and found this lovely art deco hotel and had an old fashioned counter lunch.

Art Deco Hotel

We arrived in Ballarat that evening, it was dark but even then we could see the magnificence of the buildings and the wide streets.

Over the next few days I can say that Ballarat did not disappoint us. We did the heritage walking tours, visited the art gallery  (which was the first regional art gallery in Australia), we drove out of town and visited little villages had wonderful meals and wine (that goes without saying!) and did the tourist thing at Sovereign Hill. They have this amazing evening show that tells the story of the Eureka Stockade and it is done with lights, pyrotechnics and was truly awe inspiring. I highly recommend that one!

One thing that I did like was the Avenue of Honour, it is 22kms long and it planted with trees all the way along which represent EVERY man from Ballarat who went to WW1.  When you just see tree after tree and know that represents a person it puts it all into a sombre perspective.

So that's holidays over and back to work for me!