Token effort

I kept falling asleep on the lounge with my laptop on my knee last night as I tried to slog my way through the stuff that needed to be done by this morning. I ended up going to bed for real at 4:30am after doing about 4 hours actual work and experiencing several unsatisfactory involuntary naps.

When I got up at 7:00am I was, as one might imagine, a little worse for wear. I then went to work for 4.5 hours (and finished the stuff that was urgently needed and had appreciative things said to me by my boss), came home and collapsed on the lounge for a while, levered myself back up (with a little help) to do the kid-taxiing run and then resumed lounge occupation when Adam came home to my rescue.

A little while later I once again hauled myself upright and went wandering the house, camera in hand, muttering "What can I do that won't take very long?"

The front hallway seemed a pretty good candidate:

A fish tank maintenance bucket, 2 cat carry cages, Adam's backpack, and several bags of Viking clothing later:

We've been stepping over the cat cages for 2 weeks. How stupid is that? All I had to do was take them downstairs and stack them in their spot in the laundry.

Multi-tasking

Right at this very minute I am blogging, eating dessert and playing Star Munchkin with the family. Before doing this I did my declutter of the day while Adam cooked dessert, Tom practiced his flute, David cleaned up from dinner and Caitlin got changed for bed and put her laundry on.

The Enjo and stuff cupboard

and after...strangely roomy.

When I've finished blogging and one of the family has managed to kill enough space monsters to win the game I will be settling in to an exciting evening of doing about 5 hours work that until this afternoon I thought I had until Monday to complete. It now needs to be done by tomorrow morning.

Wish me luck, and coffee!

(I just got Squidulated and lost a level, but that's ok because I haven't got off level one yet anyway.)

Fragments from a fractured week

Hosted by Mrs4444.

I've had better weeks than this one just gone, but I've had worse too. I'm writing this sitting in my sun drenched lounge room looking out at blue sky and listening to birds in the garden and thinking life's not so bad really. It helps that I've just unloaded all the brain clutter from the week here for your entertainment. Or not. Whatever :-)

****

On Wednesday morning I was woken early by Jack as he sneaked up on to the end of our bed and stealthily crept right up my leg, over my hip and settled on my ribcage. Pretty much a complete failure of covert operations I have to say - there's a lot of cat there and the paw pressure is quite significant. The dog wasn't fooled either and she has a policy that states that if Mummy is cuddling someone else then there must be simultaneous Clara cuddles. So I end up with a husband on one side, a dog on the other and a cat on the top. Cosy. Then Clara snuggled a little closer and stuck her nose right up against Jack's. I held my breath for the inevitable claw-swipe...and Jack reached forward and began grooming Clara's forehead. We've come a long way from the mutual loathing and murderous impulses of their initial relationship.

****

I wrote a fairly long paragraph here about a stressful afternoon with one of my kids but then decided there's really no need to record the details for posterity. Suffice to say that I spent Wednesday afternoon and evening going through a very familiar cycle that involves a lot of raised voices, at least half a box of tissues, lots of challenging conversation and very little school work getting done for the time involved.

****

Thursday started with an alarm that didn't go off and us therefore waking up about 30 minutes before Adam and David were supposed to be heading off to work and school respectively and an hour before Caitlin was due at school (for an extra before school thing). I therefore didn't shower before driving Caitlin and Tom to school, arriving 6 minutes late. Adam and Dave left about 15 minutes late. I came home, got myself sorted out and headed over to the high school 30 minutes late for canteen duty, only to find that I wasn't even rostered on this week - I'm on next week. Brilliant. I stayed anyway because they were short-handed and now won't have to go next week, so that's something I guess!

****

I do this thing when I have paid work to do at home where I just can't seem to get stuck into it unless either the house is empty or everyone in it is asleep. I had work to do on Thursday that needed to be finished by Friday morning and, because I wasn't home while the kids were at school, I didn't end up starting it until midnight. I sent the critical email off at 4am and went to bed cursing myself for being an idiot. Adam very kindly left me in bed when the alarm went off and got the kids off to school and I spent a lovely relaxing morning pretending I had no responsibilities. I hope that doesn't mean I forfeit a similar experience on Sunday.

****

My very lovely husband has purchased tickets for us to go and see Bill Bailey perform at the State Theatre on July 23rd, can't wait!

****

That's all from me folks! Now, head on over to Half-Past Kissin' Time for more Friday Fragments!

Picking up the pieces on a Fragmented Friday

Hosted by Mrs4444.

I've been a bit scarce around the blogosphere this week on account of it not having been the greatest week ever, I tend to read but not post or comment when I'm stressed. I don't really have much by way of amusement or fascination to offer today, rather I seem to be dumping a whole lot of whinging out for you instead. For fragments that might be a little more fun to read, head on over to Half-Past Kissin' Time and find out what everyone else has on offer this week.

****

On Sunday night last weekend I started working on stuff for my paid job at 10:30pm. I finished at 8:30am. Now, I knew I had a lot of work to do but due to not realising that the number of emails showing against my work folder represented about half of what was actually in the folder (I didn't realise how many I'd "read" when moving them from the inbox) I had expected to hit the sack by about 4am. Monday, as you may imagine, was a bit of a write-off.

****

One of the reasons I didn't start working till 10:30pm was that we'd spent Sunday afternoon and evening at Coogee beach with some blog-friends from the Hoyden About Town community. It was a lovely day, not too hot, the kids swam and played on the beach and I got to sit around chatting for several hours. Then we had fish and chips for dinner and headed off home as the light began to fade. That part of my week was pretty good really.

****

My wonderful Mum looked after the kids for me on Tuesday morning so I could go in to the office for a few hours. I don't like asking her to have the kids so I can work and I don't do it often, maybe a few times a year, but she assures me they're really quite pleasant to have around. I do think it's a less onerous job now that they're older and more independent.

****

When I came back from work we all headed down to my Grandma's place for a visit. During the course of conversation I told Grandma that I was expecting things to be much less stressful this year as I would have less stuff on my plate and that I was looking forward to having more time to come and see her. But I didn't say "touch wood" and that may have been a mistake.

****

On Wednesday I took my Dad for some medical tests (which all turned out fine) and then brought him back to my place for a bit. He was looking rather distressed so I asked if he was ok.

Umm. No. Apparently not.

Turns out he's been in the throes of a manic episode for the last 2 months. I knew he was a bit high, I'd even rung his doctor at one point to express my concern and I'd been reassured by the fact that Dad was seeing his doctor regularly and that his medication was being adjusted and that it was all under control. Well, I'm not sure that I call spending every last cent of your retirement savings and doing a bunch of other stuff which I won't be writing about here counts as being under control. I'm just really thankful that his superannuation pensions are safe and that he decided to tell me and ask for help before he wound up crashing into a major depression as has happened in the past. Bipolar sucks.

****

I took the kids to Pymble pool today, it was a bit of an effort to leave the lovely air-conditioned comfort of the house and brave the 38°C (100.4F) heat but the prospect of plunging into the cool water made it seem worthwhile. Which it would have been if the pool hadn't been practically lukewarm. Warm chlorinated water is anathema to me, it's why I hate indoor pools and it makes me feel ill. But there was no way I was getting out and sitting in the heat while the kids swam so I stuck it out. The kids tried to drown each other and me for a while until in desperation I invented a new game. We all ducked underwater at the same time and tried to work out what one person was yelling while submerged. Kept them amused for a remarkably long time, especially when I choked while trying to yell "CANDY CANE." We then switched to sea-creature charades, my sea-horse was apparently completely baffling, Caitlin did a very convincing jelly fish, David's starfish was instantly recognisable and Tom was revealed as a moray eel in disguise.

****

Tonight we've had Dad here at our place, fed him a roast pork dinner, and gone through the figures for his finances. I've been able to convince him that he is not going to end up destitute within the week and that he can actually afford to continue living where he is. He will have to sell his car and cut up his credit cards but it should all work out in the end. He's much, much calmer than he was on Wednesday and I'm hopeful that with the right care he won't end up completely falling apart this time.

I'm taking him grocery shopping in the morning because he's not up to doing that on his own and we'll have him over for a meal at least twice a week for the foreseeable future. My Mum will be helping out too and will drive him to his appointment with his psychiatrist on Monday. I haven't been game to ask how things stand with his girlfriend, they weren't living together so I'm not sure what she knows or how she's reacted to the situation. I am wondering if I ought to be inviting him to come and stay with us for a while, but to be perfectly honest I'm not sure I'd be able to cope with that.

****

It's supposed to be even hotter tomorrow, we'll probably hit the 40°C mark here. I plan on hiding inside with large quantities of cold drinks. But Sunday is promising to be much more civilized, perhaps we'll head off to the beach again!

A room with a view

I was sitting in the office this afternoon, by myself, listening to the sound of the creek at the bottom of the gully coming in through the open balcony door and thinking how lucky I am to be working in such a lovely environment. I've been meaning to take photos for a while now but I always think of it too late and don't have time to muck about with the camera before rushing off to be on time for the kids, but today I wasn't in a huge hurry, so photos there are.

This is the view from our office balcony.

If you click through to the larger image you can see a smattering of white gum-blossom in the tops of some of the trees.

That photo is a little over-exposed because I wanted to capture the greenery up close to our building, here's how the sky really looked today.

Even the car park at work makes me happy as I walk past the gardens full of new growth,

flowers blooming,

and snoozing Banksia men.

There's nothing like a bit of nostalgic reminiscence to brighten the afternoon. My copy of The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie was given to me on my 7th birthday by my Nana, my Dad's mum. She always gave me beautiful books as presents, usually purchased at The Children's Bookshop at Beecroft. Snugglepot and Cuddlepie is held together with yellowing sticky tape, testament to many re-reads.

Gratitude

I am grateful for flexible working arrangements that allow Adam and I to take the following circumstances in our stride:

Last night Adam went to the pub after work and left his car at work over-night.
I was giving a talk about the P&C at kindy orientation this morning between 9:15 and 10:30am.
Caitlin was attending a singing workshop as part of the Northern Sydney Region Enrichment Day for Gifted & Talented Students from 9:30am to 2:30pm at Bobbin Head about 25 minutes drive from our place.
Adam dropped me and the boys at school and took Caitlin to the workshop where he was told that at 2:30pm the kids would be putting on a 25 minute concert.
So instead of dropping the car at school, so I could go to work, and catching the train in to the office he decided he'd better work from home so that there'd be someone at home when the boys got home.
I finished at school and drove Adam home then headed off to work, did a couple of hours there and then went to pick Caitlin up.
As it happened I ended up getting home before the boys because the bus was late but it was very nice to not have to worry about it.

The singing workshop seems to have been a big hit, Caitlin had a lovely day and concert was very impressive. There were 13 kids in the group, some of them very talented indeed. They were taught by a lovely guy whose name I didn't catch and also had coaching from someone who'd been on Australian Idol whose name Caitlin can't remember (apparently like mother like daughter when it comes to memory for names :P). Anyway, it's pretty cool that the kids were offered such a great opportunity - something else to be grateful for!

With a nod of the head in Ariane's direction, who has been writing regular gratitude posts.

Bootstraps, I has 'em

Now I just need to work out how to haul myself up by them.

Some of you may have noticed a distinct lack of new content around these parts of late (go on, please say you've noticed?), poor old June has a mere 3 posts to its name! I think it's time I did something about that, don't you?

It's not like I haven't had time really, there have been plenty of hours during which I have sat with my laptop on my knee and wandered around the blogosphere thinking to myself "I should post a comment there" or "ooo! I should post on that too" and sometimes I click into the comment box or open a new post in Blogger and then sit there with no words coming until I click away again. Apparently my brain has been able to manage the intent to write but not the act of doing so.

Work has been busy, much busier and more overwhelming than I'd signed up for when I took the job, but I'm enjoying the work and the people in the office are lovely. Plus we've just got ourselves another pair of hands in to take over some of the stuff that Jen and I were simply not getting around to, so my to do list suddenly got a lot shorter.

Kid and school stuff has swallowed a fair bit of time and energy recently too. There was the Family Fun Day at the school weekend before last - rides, stalls, art show, raffle, auctions - a huge production and although I'm not much involved with the organising, as P&C president I try to be around and do whatever I can. The kids have taken turns at being sick on and off all term, David is at home coughing up a lung today, but luckily none of it has been anything worse than a bad cold (and, yes, they shared with me too).

This weekend we have Tom's Drama class performances of Midnite by Randolph Stow. It's a great book so I'm really looking forward to seeing the show. They do a 3:30pm and 6:30pm show and I've committed to cooking scones, serving supper at the first show, helping backstage at the second show and taking some of the costumes home to wash after the shows. Yes, I'm a twit.

Last week Caitlin auditioned for Annie, we haven't heard back from them yet but she seemed to have fun doing the audition, there was lots of smiling and hugs and her telling me she loves me and that I'm a wonderful mum. (Apparently because I took her to the audition, and possibly because when we came out of the audition and it was raining, I danced around singing "I'm singing in the rain..." in front of all the other kids and parents which she rather oddly seemed to think was ok and cool and not embarrassing at all.)

The dog tried to kill the small grey cat this morning. Unfortunately my leg was in the way so she ended up with a mouthful of my calf instead of cat. High speed staffy teeth hurt even when there's no actual biting involved, just a collision. Clara subsequently spent a good 20 minutes sitting on the landing half-way down the stairs wearing the most abject expression of contrition I have ever seen and begging with her big brown eyes for my forgiveness.

Here's what it looked like this morning, the bruise is developing nicely as the day goes on.

Just a few minutes prior to this incident I'd been admiring how well Clara and Jack were getting on as big brown dog ever so gently nuzzled up to huge fluffy ginger cat, tail wagging and politely asking if he'd like to play. Jack will now tolerate having his bum sniffed and will touch noses in greeting before wandering off again. Samantha turns into hissing, snarling, scratching hell cat whenever Clara comes in sight - hence the homicide attempt. Still got some work to do there.

The second unit of DVD shelves is in place and we have 6 empty shelves ready to accommodate future growth in our collection. Adam has also catalogued the entire collection on his laptop, we own a little less than 500 titles but a significant proportion of those are boxsets so there's well over 500 disks. Bit of a worry really...

As for the bootstraps thing, I figure I'd better stop waiting for the muse and just bloody well write something every day, mundane or otherwise!

Two weeks in the life of Mim

Em over at Shrinking Yoda has posted a look at her schedule over 2 weeks. Out of a kind of morbid curiosity I thought I'd do the same.

The week just gone:
9th - 15th March

Mon - Take kids to school. Work at publishers. Pick up from school. Supervise homework. Cook dinner. Take Caitlin to Ballet. Adam brings his mum over for dinner. Adam goes to Sword training (usually with Dave but last week he stayed home.)

Tues - Take kids to school. Take dog to dog park for quick play. Work at bookshop. Pick up kids. Supervise homework. Take Tom to Karate. Tell Adam to pick Caitlin up from singing and bring dinner home with him. Take Caitlin to singing lesson. Go to School Council meeting. Have dinner at 9:30pm. Write notice for school newsletter.

Wed - Take kids to school. Work at publishers. Pick up kids, tears from 2 of them before we've left the school grounds. Tom falls asleep on lounge and so doesn't get taken to Drama (he slept for 2 hours). Think we ended up having Chinese takeaway because I hadn't been grocery shopping.

Thurs - Take kids to school. Take dog to dog park for nice long play. Do some housework and decide to sit down and read for my sanity's sake. Go to school at 1:30pm to watch Caitlin's class run the assembly. It's a long one - they were giving out place ribbons for the swimming carnival. End up not going home and waiting to pick kids up. David doesn't go to Chess Club which saves me one trip out. Take Caitlin to Song & Dance. Go get coffee from maccas. Pick up Caitin. Cook dinner (I think this was left-over night.)

Fri - Take kids to school. Go to uniform shop and pick up a few new shirts and order new jackets for kids. Come home and have conversation with Adam about life and stuff. Canteen duty from 11am to 2pm. Hang around for Canteen committee AGM, may as well there's not enough time to do anything useful before it's time to pick up kids. Do grocery shopping. Cook dinner.

Sat - Sleep in. Eat breakfast at lunchtime. Dave's friend comes to play. Haul out bead making stuff and melt glass for a couple of hours. Burn a couple of spots on cork flooring in kitchen with hot glass. Don't care as planning to replace it anyway. Take Caitlin to sleep-over birthday party. Have massive argument with Tom over him not wanting to wait till tomorrow for me to get out my jewellery making stuff to make him a necklace. Go out to dinner at the Indian place up the road. Get rained on while taking Dave's friend home. Go to bed at 10:30pm for once but then get woken at 2am by Clara who is used to being let out for a pee at 1am *facepalm*

Sun - Get up and manage to shower dress and have breakfast before going to pick up dangerously over-tired daughter from party at 10am. Try to get Tom on his bike. Bike needs repairs. Adam goes to hardware and gets the bits we need. Lunch is eaten (left-over Indian YUM!) Tom tries to ride bike in cul-de-sac, decides it's too slopey and small. Adam takes Tom to park to find flat bit to ride on. I try to get David to prepare his current affairs presentation for Monday. Adam arrives home with Tom in foul mood (both of them that is) riding lesson not a big success. Trip to Dubbo next weekend may involve less bike riding than we'd hoped. Send Adam and Caitlin to bed for a nap - he's snoring on the lounge and she's wandering around crying. I've now been sitting with Dave for about an hour and he has written 3 lines on the subject of the blue-striped fangblenny. I need a recorded message saying "pick up your pencil and get on with it". Once I finish writing this I guess I'll be making Tom a necklace. And then we'll be going out to dinner at Lowenbrau which will make Adam happy and we'll take my Dad which will make him happy.

The week ahead:
16th - 22nd March

Mon - Walk dog. Kids to school. Work at publishers. Pick kids up. Homework. Cook dinner. Caitlin to Ballet at 6pm. Adam's mum for dinner. Adam and Dave to Sword training at 7:45pm.

Tues - Walk dog. Kids to school. Not working at bookshop. Prepare for P&C AGM. Get alcohol permit signed by police for P&C social. Do grocery shopping. Pick up kids. Homework. Cook dinner. Take Tom to Karate. No singing lesson for Caitlin - phew! Go to P&C meeting. Write P&C report for newsletter. Update all P&C contact details for website.

Wed - Walk dog. Kids to school. Work at publishers. Pick kids up. Homework. Take Tom to Drama class. Cook dinner.

Thurs - Walk dog. Kids to school.....Hey! I have NOTHING PLANNED!.....Pick up kids. Pack for weekend away. Pick up David from Chess Club at 3:45pm. Take Caitlin to Song & Dance at 4:15. Pick her up at 4:45pm. Wonder where my afternoon went. Homework. Cook diner. More packing.

Fri - Walk dog before vet comes to pick up animals (assuming I remember to organise this!). Kids to school. Work at publishers. Pick up kids. Drive to Dubbo.

Sat & Sun - Have fun. Hey, it's a good plan don't knock it. Drive home from Dubbo.

It doesn't really look that bad to me. Monday nights are a bit hectic though and there's a notable lack of housework in there. Which is why I want to get a cleaner. Just need to tidy up enough first :P

Status report

Lego pistol - retrieved, the friend admitted his mistake without any need to produce the evidence.

Laundry - Mostly folded but not ironed and at least 3 loads waiting to be done.

Kitchen - pantry and tupperware cupboard exploded several weeks ago, it's been a losing battle ever since.

Groceries - I am so not adjusting to not being able to do the shopping when the kids are at school, we are out of most of the basics and used up the last of the frozen left-overs last night. Looks like I'll be shopping this evening.

Kid's homework - I'm conflicted about this, they're all outside playing happily and being energetic, I so don't want to to drag them in and have them switch to irritating each other while I end up yelling at them to "sit down, pick up a pen and bloody well do your homework!"

Christmas shopping - I've done nigh on bugger all, this has me a little concerned as by this time I have usually pretty much finished.

Sleep - in deficit by at least 6 hours. Must go to bed before 11:00pm tonight.

Work - I'm enjoying it, so far so good.

Friends - fabulous.

Husband - awesome.

Life - despite the inevitable frustrations of being a parent and the whole adjusting to the new way things are around here, is pretty bloody good.

NaBloPoMo - taxing my creativity :P

Car parks are not always concrete jungles

My new workplace is in a fairly recent development hacked out of the edge of a quite extensive area of bushland. The views from the office are rather nice and they've done a pretty good job with the landscaping, the car parks have plenty of garden beds strewn about the place.

Apparently the local wildlife have lost no time in making themselves at home, Jen tells me she often sees a couple of reptilian residents making use of the warm bitumen in the car parks.

As I was leaving this afternoon, this fellow popped out from under a car as I walked past and headed off into the garden. He seemed quite happy to hang around and have his photo taken.

I wanted to get a shot that showed just how big he was but of course there's nothing in shot to give a sense of scale, suffice to say he was big for a water dragon!

Wish me luck

Tomorrow I'm off to a new-ish job. I say "ish" because it's with the same company that I made my first foray back into the workforce with back in June. I'll be doing 2 half days a week in the office, and now that they've moved to bigger premises my bestest mate Jen and I are able to be there at the same time so I'm quite looking forward to that.

I'm still doing 2 half days at the bookshop as well so I'm only left with one day to myself. I'm actually a little worried that it'll all end in tears, or that we'll be eating toasted sandwiches for dinner several nights a week because I can't get my act together.

So, um, yeah. Wish me luck!

Ask and ye shall receive - more or less

I woke up this morning at about 3:00am with an absolutely torturous sinus headache, took some sudafed and proceeded to toss and turn for nearly an hour listening to Adam snore. So when the alarm went off a few hours later I was still somewhat worse for wear.

Adam got the kids up, dressed, fed and off to school and I rang the doctor, made an appointment for 3:45pm and went back to dozing.

Sometime mid-morning I realised I could breathe...and my sinuses were beginning to clear...and I was hungry.

Hmm, what should I ask the universe for today?

I got up, showered and dressed, and then had to sit down and recover from the shakes - a couple of days in bed and the aftermath of fever and I can't even make it up and down the stairs in the house without turning into a quivering mess.

Anyway, I decided not to waste the day, made myself some lunch, hopped in the car and went to Infinitas, I've only been trying to get there for about a month. Came away with Alastair Reynolds' The Prefect, Greg Egan's Incandescence, Elizabeth Moon's Victory Conditions, Lois McMaster Bujold's The Sharing Knife: Passage, Terry Pratchett's The Discworld Graphic Novels - The Colour of Magic & The Light Fantastic, Lawrence Watt-Evans' The Turtle Moves and Secrets of the Wee Free Men and Discworld by Carrie Pyykkonen and Linda Washington and last but not least a tentative job offer.

I'll be going in next week to see if it'll work out or not for them and for me, the guy who owns the shop is a high-school friend of my brother-in-law so it's all pretty informal and "let's just see how it goes". Also, if someone else comes along who can be as flexible as I can with regards to doing more or less hours as needed and doesn't have to bugger off to pick up kids from school then the deal will probably be off. But in the meanwhile, working in a Sci-fi/Fantasy bookshop, well, it's only my dream retail job isn't it?

Adam seems not so very excited about this though, I suspect that rather than anticipating an extra income, he foresees being required to build new bookshelves.

(The doctor gave me antibiotics for the sinus thing so with any luck I'll be back to normal by the weekend.)

I went to work today

Now that's something I haven't said in about 11.5 years! Yep I'm back in the paid workforce, just 2 half-days a week at the moment and nicely flexible when it comes to school holidays and the like. I'm not sure how much work they'll have for me going forward (and of course there's the whole will they actually want to keep me or not thing) but so far it all seems good.

I get to go to an office and sit at a desk, make phone calls, send emails and drink coffee. There could be worse things in life :)

Huge thanks to my good friend Jen for putting in lots of good words for me - it's her desk I'm sitting at on the days she's not there. Which is the only bummer 'cause it would be even more awesome if I was working with her there in the office instead of merely hijacking her workstation.

In other news, I think the dog is allergic to our house, she's been spending lots of time inside with all the rain lately and she just will. not. stop. scratching. It's driving me nuts especially in the wee small hours of the morning at the foot of our bed. And she's doing nasty things to her skin in the process. Might need to get the vet in....