How Father's Day Saves me Money (warning: includes grouch)

The this-is-a-relief aspect of businesses emailing me the third batch of personalised information telling me what to buy from them for Father's Day is that it now saves me money for the next year. From today, in fact.

Father's Day is difficult for me, for both my fathers are dead*. Ads targeted at the general public are annoying, but not aimed at me, so I shrug my shoulders and move on. Ads sent to my inbox, though, or tailored to my Facebook page, are on my more-private space, so I evaluate them differently. How I evaluate them is simple: third strike and they're out. No matter how much I want that cordless drill, I will not buy it from them. No matter how delightfully witty their ad and how wonderfully acute the marketing people are in understanding new media, all it does is remind me not to shop with them.

There aren't very many socially acceptable ways of dealing with festivities where one cannot happily participate. Many people deal with it by undergoing forced enjoyment, but I am not someone who accepts forced enjoyment without exceptionally good reasons.

I was going to write a long list of these events and point out how lonely is the single Jew in Australia with one parent and no children and far too many advertisements reminding me that this is a bad status and unacceptable to society as a whole. None of my major festivals are in the public eye and none of my life-cycle events have been, either, not since I graduated my first degree.** The vast majority of public celebrations just do not apply. In fact, the vast majority of advertising campaigns do not apply.

I was going to mock everything with a "Gillian's Avoidance Guide," but that would be cruel to those of you who are closer to the standard profile for purposes of public rejoicing, and besides, my Scroogitudiness is mostly due to the pressure of the ads and the fact that I haven't yet found mooncakes this year (mooncakes - preferably lotus seed ones*** - are my preferred way of dealing with Father's Day, but my local grocer only stocks the not-so-good ones and besides, I fear a repeat of the conversation where he suggested that Jewish children should die because Palestinians are suffering - which he intimated rather than saying directly, I admit, but which still hurt).

If I wrote a list of festivals and celebrations and local drives and campaigns that exclude me, it would be long and would share the misery far too much regardless of how funny I found it. Forced misery is worse than forced enjoyment. Besides, mostly I cope. I sing evil alternate carols at Christmas when the ads become a deluge and I get my friends drunk at Purim (though not this year for Purim, for I was ill) which helps me deal with Easter. And besides, Father's Day is one of the better days, for it's two weeks before Rosh Hashanah this year and I will be making my grandmother's amazing honeycake (the one with chocolate and coffee and dried fruit) and so I can plan for that.

I've not ever got an ad in my inbox saying, "A cordless drill is the perfect Rosh Hashanah present for your friend who has a new flat," or "Chocolate in sticks and balls - you can design and eat the chemical structure of your choice: a wonderful gift for geeks at Babbagefest." This is why I have instituted the three strikes rule. This goes for US, NZ, Australian and UK festivals, for I get email for all countries. If a firm persists and get more personal (I got an 'intimate letter' ad on Wednesday) then I shall follow my mother's example and send them (by return email) lists of items that dead people might find useful (bones need moisturiser, probably, and I might need advice on how to find the right size suit). Or I might question the business concerning the cost of delivery to cemeteries and whether they need either father to sign for their gift and whether it costs extra for raising the dead to get their signature.

I'm not nearly as grumpy as I sound. A week ago I was more grumpy than I sounded, but right now I have instituted Coping Strategies. The twelve offending emails have been deleted. And I have a Policy. I was a public servant for ten years: policies hold the universe together: my three strikes rule is going to get me through this, and make my year ahead very economical.







*I made Christiana Stead's 'Dead Dad' Joke to my first father when his cancer was spreading. He loved it. It was not a joke I could make to my second, whose sense of humour wasn't nearly as morbid and was quite possibly a lot subtler.

**Why isn't there a Joyous Menopause Night, like a hen's night but with more chocolate? I could entirely look forward to that one!

***All care packages joyously nibbled, slowly. What I want to do is taste some of the more exotic mooncakes. I saw a mocha one advertised, for instance, and a chestnut one. They're never available here. And I have physical restrictions: I can only eat the really traditional nut ones that have cashews and no peanuts or brazil nuts. This footnote is brought to you by Mooncake Deprival Syndrome. I could make my own, but it's not the same AT ALL. Besides, I love the containers they come in almost as much as I love the mooncakes themselves.

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I ought to stop complaining, for when I complain loudly enough, the universe laughs at me. This afternoon the laughter echoed through my shopping trip. It took a while longer than it should have because everyone was feeling the cold and we all kind of bumbled along, getting in each other's way and apologising.

It's a strange type of cold. The actual temperature, for instance, remained around 6-7 degrees. The sun came out. And went in again. And came out again. On my way home it mostly stayed out, but then, the rain was still falling (lightly) and, through the rain, the snow and ice fell. The ice glinted quite strangely. The air chill factor took that tolerable 6-7 degrees down to between -1 and -3. I have exact temperatures because I was so entertained by walking in the sun, sleet and snow that I had to check it all up.

I have medications. I have shopping for tonight. I have my library supplies. No more shopping for me until Sunday afternoon.

This doesn't mean I get to stay home. I am about to have two days of adventures. I'll tell you about them one by one, after I'm safely through each. Right now, I need a very big cuppa and a thousand words written, instantly.

(no subject)

I'm pulling together my CV and pulling teeth would be more comfortable.

I have this really bad tendency (job-wise, CV-wise) to do all kinds of interesting things and then to forget I have done them. My life has been very eventful for something so dull it's not worth keeping notes about. Even despite my lack of records, I have been involved in organising at least twelve conferences (I'm missing some, I know, but surely a round dozen is enough for anyone?) and the total number of public presentations since I moved to Canberra (not counting radio - if anyone needs my radio spots, I'm in trouble, for I can find the ABC offices in Canberra more easily than I can recall how often I've been there - at least 7 times, for there were three sets of cabbies who had heard the interview and there were at least 4 sets of busses) is around 30. Thirty that I remember, at least.

There are holes. I know there are holes. I'm pretty sure I have all my grants accounted for and I have left out a couple of prizes and awards (for who on earth would be interested in my debating award, when I was in Year 12? I say this despite one of my students coming up to me last semester and said "My boss knows your name - he says you were in the State team in 1978. I never was. In my year the top award went to a state school student - me- and I wasn't even considered for the state team and it made life very interesting at university when, somehow, all the debaters finally worked out that I came from entirely the wrong background and yet had the Swannie. Some people handled it better than others, let's say. And I was a bit inconsistent as a debater - much better as a team leader, so around me there was always a question of how much I deserved when people saw me on my bad days. On my good days I was decent enough to be an Australasian Intervarsity Grand Finalist, but I had this nasty tendency to confuse audiences with emotion, which was not allowable. At the heart of the various messes I found myself in was the fact that I was Jewish, female, and Arts student and had been to a perfectly ordinary school, not an elite one. These things aren't supposed to happen in Australia, land of everyone being equal, but they do and this is the reason I didn't have a habit of recording things. No-one has ever wanted to know about awards and very few people ask for my life history and so I don't tend to write it down. Before I did my dumping-of-committees so that I could finish this PhD in a hurry, I found myself not quite able to work out when I'd started on each committee. I live in a strangely busy present always. (And I've just remembered 2 encyclopaedia articles I wrote - how can one forget these things? Actually, I hadn't forgotten them. I know them almost word for word - I just don't think of them in relation to a CV.)

Suddenly I'm faced with job applications and the side of my life that I've done a lot in turns out to be rather important. I almost want to crowd-source my CV, just to see if someone remembers where I've been and what I've done.

I think I'll be OK, but it's painful. Very, very painful.