General News
21 November, 2025
A Mum's World: When Life Gets Full Enough to Miss a Deadline
World Kindness Day… with 1000 teenagers! Yolande's week has was filled with badge making, gift giving and fruit salad chaos.
As I’ve been writing my column weekly for more than 21 years now, it was a bit of a shock to me that this week I completely forgot it existed!
I think maybe it’s partly because I had a whole school event last Thursday.
We marked World Kindness Day with badge making, gift giving, and most importantly, fruit salad and custard eating.
Sounds pretty simple, but it takes so much organising to prepare for any event you are inviting one thousand teenagers to!
That same day I had a Chaplaincy Committee meeting – of which I have officially been the chair for ten years now. Weirdly, I have also been the actual chaplain for five years.
As we failed to get the federal funding a couple of years ago, we talked new fundraising ideas.
Our biannual Chaplaincy Book Fair is fabulous but only brings in a quarter of what we need to raise each year.
Then I caught the train to Melbourne to be my daughter’s beauty therapy client for her Saturday Clinic.
It turns out it was her last Saturday, so I luxuriated in my facial and manicure.
With only three more weeks of classes, she will graduate in mid-December as a fully qualified Beauty Therapist - which is why we spent Friday night in the city shopping for a graduation outfit.
Any graduation is a grand affair, but for my baby girl, the event will unfold in the Grand Ballroom at Crown, and the dress code is extremely formal.
We indulged in some speed shopping, and I coached her through the hideous nightmare that is ‘fitting room lighting’.
We found the gown just as the clock struck midnight and we both turned back into pumpkins… or something like that.
Actually, the clock struck nine and the staff had to lock up, but we took a photo of the tag and I later transferred the cash.
Not content with shopping for only one graduation outfit though, earlier that day I had helped my middle daughter pick out the right frock for her daytime graduation, also in mid-December, but this time following a three-year Bachelor of Communication degree, so her dress will be mostly hidden by a black cap and gown.
I still get such a thrill when the outfit I select off the rack is the creation that looks best and gets chosen as ‘the one’.
Being a mother of three daughters has me feeling totally qualified to dish out change room advice left right and centre.
Memorising exactly which rack in the department store we chose the design from when running out to grab another size is a priceless gift from God.
Coming home from Melbourne with the soon to be university graduate, she baked gingerbread whilst existing in that twilight zone between finishing classes and applying for jobs.
We watched a Netflix thriller late into the night before I got up early for work to visit a fellow Chaplain in Warracknabeal.
No wonder I forgot to write this column.