Maggie will now have to find a fulltime job until she goes to America in June. This is going to be particularly interesting to watch because, as well as expressing a desire to work, she also has some fantastic holiday plans that won't come cheap. For some reason, the money tree I planted in the backyard was a dud, so as far as financing these holiday plans of hers go, I will be diddly-squat help to her.
My own working life began about age 7, when I started delivering newspapers after school on a Wednesday. It was icecream money and then it never stopped. Babysitting, cleaning, working in a hairdresser, general factotum in an appliance store, kiwifruit picking and working at Dublin St Service Station, all before I finished school.
My mother had this wonderful habit of nominating her offspring for jobs whenever anyone asked. "Nick'll do it, Christopher'll do it, Kirsten'll do it" - you get the idea. We would then be informed of what we were going to be helping with.
We had a reputation for being good workers. To be honest, we never got a chance to be anything else because being lazy was quite simply not an option in my family. Laziness was a fate worse than death and that aversion to laziness has stayed with me my whole working life. Judging by the fact my daughter is a gold medallist in the sleeping-in Olympics, that is not a trait she has inherited from me.
I went to watch Maggie play cricket for Whanganui last weekend and struggled greatly with sitting down to watch her for a total of six hours.
I kept shooting home to do jobs and felt guilty about the things that I should have been doing around my home. Thank God, it's the tail end of her cricketing career. I've decided I am not born to be a cricket-watching parent. I now understand my other friends who quite simply wouldn't let their children play cricket because they couldn't stand doing nothing all day.
I know, I know, a parent isn't supposed to dictate, due to boredom, what sport their children play but that is six hours of my life that I will never get back and my garden badly needed doing.
The message I really want to impart to my darling is that "adulting" is damned tough.
To be honest, this is the most financially tough time I remember, trying to make ends meet. A lot has been made about this in the media, but I am living it and it doesn't seem to matter how hard I work, just achieving the basics seems like scaling Everest (backwards, piggybacking a gorilla).
Food and petrol are ridiculously expensive and paying for all of that as well as every other household bill on my own, and supporting my daughter, is so difficult that I live in a constant state of worry. I try to rustle up gratitude each day in the hope the sky will open up and shower me with money. It hasn't worked yet.
As tough as things are for me, one way I can help give Maggie a bit of a head start with navigating burgeoning adulthood is to have her stay with me while she saves her money.
Besides, she can't move out yet - what would I complain about then?
