If you're part of the "sandwich generation", you're over 40 and caught between the demands of a career, kids, ageing parents and quite possibly grandchildren.
Tricia Stringer, who gave a talk at Wallsend Library on Tuesday, knows all about this generation.
For a start, she's part of it. Secondly, she's written a book about it. A novel, in fact.
"I've heard lots of stories where people feel pressed on all sides, as if they were the filling in the sandwich. So it's an apt label," Tricia said.
Her book, The Model Wife, depicts what happens when real-life betrayals and struggling relationships clash with outdated ideas of what a woman should be.
"The initial catalyst for this story was a visit to communities on the remote Dampier Peninsula in Western Australia," Tricia said.
"I got chatting to a woman who lived by one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen. I realised her love of her country and her isolation were not dissimilar to country women in the remote rural areas of my home state, South Australia.
"Later, I was reading an article on women and mid-life crisis and it made me wonder what that might look like for women in remote areas. And so Natalie came to life."
Natalie King is the book's key character. She's a hard-working woman, loving mother and wife. At almost 60, she's become the glue that holds her family together.
Then, one day, she snaps it.
Everyone is taking her for granted and she gets pushed beyond her limits [hey, it happens]. She leaves home without warning [this, not so much].
"We all deal with pressure differently. Some thrive, some crash and burn. The majority probably sit somewhere in the middle, juggling things, always on the run, trying to be everything to everyone with little me-time. I think many women over 40 aren't good at me-time," Tricia said.
The novel features an old book from about a century ago, full of advice for young wives.
These kinds of books were given to many women in the early 1900s by their well-meaning mothers or grandmothers to help them become the "perfect housewife".
"These books of advice were around for many generations, often disguised as cookbooks with chapters squirrelled away at the back, full of instructions on how to manage the home and care for your husband and family," Tricia said.
The kind of chapters you'd find in this type of book were things like "The Model Wife Accepts that her Husband is Master", "The Model Wife is Proud of the Home her Husband Provides" and "The Model Wife Gives up her Career to Raise her Family".
Tricia laughs at these things now, but believes equality has a way to go.
"While we've come some way from the old ways of thinking, the majority of housekeeping and children-rearing duties often still fall in the woman's court," she said.
"How far removed actually are we from these prescriptive forms of advice?"
With this in mind, Tricia made a pact with herself that she'd go skydiving and finish writing a book by her 40th birthday.
The skydiving went by the wayside, but the book didn't. Since then, she's written several books. The Model Wife is availableat McLean's Booksellers in Hamilton, as well as online. Her next book is about skydiving [just kidding].
Acting Your Age
Speaking of being over 40, actress and comedian Sarah Kendall told us that she's now 43.
But her brain is stuck on 42. That is, she still thinks she's 42.
"I couldn't get my brain to realise that 42 was over," said Sarah, a Novocastrian/Londoner who stars in Frayed on the ABC.
"Also there are times when you're filling in a form and you go, 'Hang on, what year is it - 2018 - oh no, that's not right."
Bird Rescue
Plovers cop a fair bit of flak this time of year [all year round, really], but they're nothing if not good parents.
One plover couple were super-stressed about losing their chick down a drain at Gateshead.
"My friend Ruth [from Dudley] got a call from one of her friends, Russell, to alert her to the distressed chick," former Newcastle Herald journalist Neil Keene told Topics.
"She came to my place and collected a pool net, and took down a few other things to try to help.
"It took an hour but, after a bit of Macgyvering, they got it sorted."
The problem was the gutter grill was so narrow that a net wouldn't fit.
"So they got her son's insect net, used a hair elastic to attach it to a broomstick and then scooped it up," Neil said.
"Ruth's 8-year-old daughter's hands were just small enough to cradle it and push it up through the hole it had fallen through."
They found another chick in the gutter nearby, so they picked them both up and placed them on the grass.
"The mother or father - not sure who does the duties - had been screeching constantly. It promptly plopped itself down onto the chicks and sat there much more contentedly."
Plovers aren't everyone's cup of tea [haters gonna hate] but, as Neil says, "the chicks are pretty bloody cute".
