It's been a while

Many apologies if you've been waiting patiently to see what I've been up to lately. Because of course there are lots of you whose lives are just not complete without me :P

Since we last spoke, I've done lots of reading, but I'm not going to bore you with any more lists. I'm trying to alternate reading books made with real paper that take up lots of space (especially beside my bed) and electronic ones on my Kindle (which don't take up so much physical space, but seem to accumulate fairly quickly nonetheless. I'm looking at you, Pixel of Ink! You know you tempt me daily!).

I also signed up for and started the Michelle Bridges 12 Week Body Transformation program. In fact, you could say I'm going to turn myself into a living Kindle, in that I will have plenty of content without taking up nearly as much physical space. Well, that's the theory anyway, and so far I'm keeping on track. The program involves a good balance of calorie-controlled nutrition and exercise, with plenty of support along the way. We had pre-season tasks to complete, which dealt with many of the issues that trip people up when they try to lose weight and get fit - excuses, goal-setting, cleaning out the kitchen so temptation is reduced, etc. We are given (via a website) weekly menus, a shopping list, a training program, and motivational videos, as well as access to the program forums where you can post about your journey, ask questions, and advise other participants based on your own experience.

There's a weekly weigh-in, 4-weekly fitness tests and body measuring, and weekly surprises (with prizes!) along the way to keep you motivated and involved.

The recipes are great. There are sometimes things I'm not so keen on, and we can make changes to suit, but in general they're healthy, colourful, easy to make, and suitable for the whole family - although last night I made a chicken and mushroom boscaiola which contained the trifecta of the kid's biggest food hates: onion, mushroom AND capsicum. It was one of my favourite meals so far, but I was prepared with an alternative for the short people, so no huge dramas.

I struggle more with the training side of things, but I have discovered that I really enjoy long walks, and it's working for me. I began with early morning walks up a local hill, but as the days are getting shorter, and it's getting a bit dark in the morning for me, I've switched to afternoon walks to the kid's school, plus at least one long walk on the weekend (aiming for around 10km, and hoping to increase that as I go on).

To date, I've dropped a little over a kilogram per week over 7 weeks. It feels very sustainable - something I can continue for as long as it takes to get back to a size and weight I feel comfortable with, and then modify to stay that way for life.

I have some other news, but that can wait until next time - I have a 10+km walk booked in for 7am tomorrow, and I need to sleep!

passport news, sharks and fairies

I received an email on the weekend to say my passport has been approved and is on its way. With a bit of luck I might even have it in my hands tomorrow. Happy :)

In other news: we are expecting a visit from the tooth fairy momentarily. The boychild has what we fondly refer to as 'shark teeth'. The new ones come through well in advance of the baby teeth loosening, so for a few weeks he has double teeth. In fact, his baby teeth don't seem to want to let go at all. Fortunately he is a brave boy, and will quite happily ask the husband to pull the old tooth out, even though it's still quite attached. I am NOT brave about such things, and hide well away from such bloody action. Makes me queasy even now, several hours after the event.

So the tooth fairy has been notified on the parent hotline, and the tooth is awaiting collection so it can become part of the great white palace. And my baby is just that little bit older.

mid-life crisis

A friend recently mentioned that she thought she might be heading for an early mid-life crisis; that she's not sure what she wants from life, but it's not what she's doing now.

 

I'm of the opinion that the 'mid-life crisis' is really a 'ticked most of the boxes - marriage, family, career, house, etc, middle class, overwhelmed but still time to analyse in a way previous generations with a more physically-demanding lifestyle, middle-class crisis'. And a lot of people are doing all that earlier, so it's hitting earlier. 

 

My mid-life crisis has been going on for years, and I finally figured out that (for me) I need to look outwards, hence the travel plans. A whistle-stop tour of a checklist of sites/sights wouldn't do it - I have to spend some time absorbing different cultures and seeing how other people live. Volunteer work would achieve something similar. 

 

Possessions aren't important in themselves, nor is money, and children will move into their own, separate lives eventually. So while all of those things are fine in their place, you can have them all and still have a big gaping hole that you only notice when you no longer have to focus on accumulating the 'stuff'. That's when people find religion (in the broadest sense) - a sense of your own tiny place in the universe (as opposed to the younger version where you're the centre of the universe), or become bitter and resentful if they don't get through this stage. And it's tough, because it's such a paradox - you're significant, but you're also tiny in the scheme of things; you're important in some contexts, but not indispensable.

 

I think I'm probably at a stage in life when things are finally falling into place and making sense. Not always the way I'd envisaged them happening, not always how I want them to happen, but it's all ok. All those platitudes about 'nothing is forever', 'nobody is indispensable', blah blah blah ... are right. I still like to be in control of things, but I started a new phase after Miss Tizz was born, and all the drama that went along with that, and then through the pregnancy/birth with the X-man. I remember very clearly thinking, when I made the decision to refuse a planned caesarean section second time around, that if the worst happened and my uterus ruptured (as the doctors threatened) and I died, then that was part of life and death, and I was ok with it. Not an ideal outcome of course, but I was at peace with the risk assessment I'd made, I thought my odds were good, and I could just go with whatever happened. I believe it's a huge part (together with other factors, some of which I engineered - like having a wonderfful independent midwife as support - and some of which were just luck - like amarvellous,considerate, respectful obstetrician being on duty at the right time) of why the X-man's's birth was so very different to Miss Tizz's's, despite them both being emergency caesareans.

I think that was the start of it for me, and the realisation that it's all about the journey, not the destination.

it's a miracle!

I'm posting before midnight! Now that's a change! Got to make a serious effort to get to bed earlier, because (despite the CPAP) I'm feeling tired again. Lack of sleep (especially good sleep earlier in the proceedings) is an obvious culprit, and I have no more excuses.

And besides, I've been a right cranky cow this weekend :(

Ok - goodnight, and I'll try harder to write something worth reading tomorrow.

upgrading

Darn it! We've used up our broadband allowance again, and we're throttled for the next week or so. So I've changed our plan to double the gigabytes, and we'll see how we cope with that for a while.

In the meantime, text-only posts, which is probably a good thing as they're a lot quicker than uploading photos and it's going to be a busy week, what with school recommencing and a lot of work on my plate.

working on the budget

I've been working on the travel budget for Europe.

Looks like we should be able to get airfares (Sydney-London & Rome-Sydney, for both of us, economy) for under $A3500.

An apartment in Rome (Trastevere or somewhere fairly central) can be had in the vicinity of $A2500 for just under two weeks.

I'm still searching in London, but hoping to find something for about $2500 for 12 nights.

Then there's a couple of nights in Paris, a night or two in Naples (if we decide to stay, and not just do a long day trip to Pompeii), the Eurostar London to Paris, the overnight train Paris to Rome, transport in each city and for day trips, entry fees/guided tours, food, incidentals ...

Lucky we're not really into shopping, or this could get even more expensive! The $12,000 I originally set may need bumping up a little (there's the 'change'). I'll add some of the transport and other costs in soon, so I can get a more realistic idea.

And then I'd better get stuck into the work, so I can pay for it all - because none of it is being done on credit. I either pay up front, or we delay the trip and keep saving.

oops!

Once again I've left blogging until the last thing at night, and all of a sudden it's 12.30am. So I'm going to be sensible (for once) and not attempt a full post, except to say that my 'change' today will be to plan on blogging earlier in the day, and setting an alarm to remind me to go to bed at a decent hour!

(Oh - and the reason I'm up so late tonight? Got a wee bit distracted looking at Rome apartments and B&Bs in the Trastevere area ...)

change of pace

It's been a bit quiet work-wise for a couple of months, which has been a nice change after the insane busy-ness earlier last year. But in the past week or so that's all changed again. Work is pouring in, and I'm having trouble getting into the 'zone'. School resumes next week (Tuesday for us), and the routine involved will probably help, although (as I've mentioned previously) I tend to struggle with routine.

So I'm going to try to formulate a rough timetable for the week, so I set aside 'work' times, 'leisure' times (for me), 'family' times and 'household' times. I suspect there'll be quite a bit of crossover with the last three, but if I can restrict work to particular hours, and really focus on it during those times, I think I can be a lot more efficient than I have been.

I probably need a set bed time too *sigh*.

Rough itinerary

There seems to be something magic about October 4 - flight prices apparently drop. So that looks like a good time to go. I've pretty much decided to book a multi-stop trip (Sydney to London, by train to Rome, the fly out from Rome to Sydney), rather than a return to London.

I'm tending towards flying with Emirates - their prices seem pretty good, and the service looks fabulous. Still looking, but I'd like to book fairly soon if possible.

We've narrowed down some of the places we'd like to visit, and this is the rough itinerary:

• Fly into London Heathrow. 
• Book into accommodation, hopefully somewhere fairly central, and spend two weeks (perhaps a day or two less) alternating between city sightseeing and day trips to Bath, Stonehenge, Cambridge or Oxford, York, etc. 
• Eurostar to Paris for about 3 days. 
• Overnight train (Artesia) to Rome.
• Book into accommodation (perhaps an apartment in Trastevere) and alternate between city sightseeing and day trips to Ostia Antica and Pompeii. Alternatively, we might stay in either Naples or Pompeii for a couple of nights, and spend more time at the excavations in Pompeii and Herculaneum (both on the Circumvesuviana train line from Naples). If we do that, we might stay somewhere different for the rest of our time in Rome.
• Fly out from Rome to Sydney.

One other possibility we're considering is train from Paris to Venice, then train to Rome for most of our time in Italy.

And now we have a basic skeleton itinerary, we're going to start listing exactly what we want to see in the available time in each destination. And keep saving!

backyard changes

I was going to post a bunch of before and after photos from the backyard, but the computer and/or Blogger doesn't want to cooperate, and it's far too late (how unusual!), so these are photos I took today (well, yesterday now).

The beans in the wicking boxes have gone crazy. They've completely covered the frame I put up, are winding around the tomato supports, reaching for the fence, and even growing up into the pear tree.

We harvested our first beans from these plants today, and even managed to get a few inside for dinner before the kids ate them all!

The husband's hydroponic tomatoes are covered in flowers and small green fruit - we've had some tomatoes off them already, but there are plenty more to come:

And the Pinkabelle apple is loaded too. It was so heavy the top threatened to snap off, so it's been staked to help support the weight:

I have visions of the whole yard being transformed into an Eden of productive greenery, but we have a way to go yet, especially in terms of pest control.

It was a good cabbage anyway, once we stripped the outer leaves and washed off the grubs.

art supplies: after

Remember this pile of stuff behind my desk a few days ago?

Well, it's gone! Mostly.

I've kept one of the crates temporarily until I find homes for those last few items (mostly books), but the other two are empty, and the bottles and boxes and tubs and other assorted materials have been packed away. The majority is now cleaned and sorted into storage boxes on the shelving, so I can find it when I need it. A few items were thrown out, a few snaffled by the children, but mostly it was still in pretty good condition. The palettes were covered in dried up paint (because I'm slack and didn't clean them at the time), so they're soaking in the kitchen sink.

The kids have taken to hanging around when I'm sorting through things - they're discovering all sorts of 'treasures'! Today we found special markers, pen nibs and ink, drawing charcoal, a flexible curve, plastic templates, a full circle protractor, compasses, a big magnifying glass, a one cent coin and a round 50 cent coin. Treasures indeed!

keeping it simple

I've noticed that whenever I start becoming stressed about something, when I can't seem to make a decision and when it all seems a bit difficult, that the obvious answer - and usually one that's far simpler than the solutions I've been pondering - starts bombarding me from many directions. At times, it takes me a while to see it, but when I do, the pattern is very clear.

I have realised:

• I don't need an iPhone - it might be nice, but I've managed just fine until now, so it's not something I need to worry about.
• I don't need to take a netbook or a laptop or an internet-enabled mobile phone overseas - if I need the internet, there are internet cafes, and plenty of hotels provide internet facilities.
• I don't need to plan everything down to the last detail - as long as we have transport and accommodation organised, we can play the rest by ear.
• I don't need to find the ultimate travel guide - I can always find an information centre, and talk to the hotel staff and locals (and am far more likely to find the good stuff that way).
• I don't need to pre-pay all the bills and freeze meals and organise everything for the males of the family when Miss Tizz and I head off on our travels - the husband is perfectly capable of handling the day-to-day stuff.
• The children don't need any more stuff, they just need our time.
• Often I don't need a prepackaged solution to something - in fact, often I don't need a solution at all because there is no problem. Marketers are very good at creating problems and then selling us their solutions, and none of it is necessary.

The common factor with all these is that I don't need. And if I don't need, I can just eliminate them as a stressor.

Simple really.

just over a week to go

School starts again in a little over a week., so we need to start making a few changes to re-establish a school term routine around here. In case you hadn't noticed, we're night owls, and not particularly good at mornings when left to our own devices.

Unfortunately, the school system doesn't really accommodate that, so the next week will involve setting the alarm and making sure everyone gets back into the habit of getting up, washed, dressed, fed and ready to go at a reasonable hour. I think I may need to plan morning excursions as an encouragement.

Work is starting to roll in faster as well, so it's probably good timing for me too - I need to get the discipline of regular work hours into place, so I can a) keep the work up-to-date, and b) plan regular NON-work hours. I find the temptation to sit in front of the computer very difficult to resist, but it plays havoc with the rest of my life, so despite my aversion to routine, I think some structure to my working week might be a positive thing.

Again, it's something I've been talking about for a long time, and this year it's going to happen!

never too old to learn

A brochure arrived in the letterbox a couple of days ago, advertising 'recreational evening classes' at a local college. Most of the courses are over an 8 week term, and held in the evenings. I've looked through similar brochures in the past, considering courses I'd like to do, but there never seemed to be enough time or money (or perhaps that was just an excuse - they're not terribly expensive, and only a couple of hours once a week).

So ... as of this evening, I have enrolled in 'Italian for travellers - beginning'. The course is on Monday nights starting on February 8, and I'm really looking forward to it. I haven't done any language classes (apart from a little bit with the CD course I bought last year) since Years 7 & 8 at high school, and that was pretty basic French, some of which I seem to have retained, although I'm not sure how I would manage at normal speaking speed with a native French-speaker! Actually, I am pretty sure I would be appalling ...

It really is starting to feel like this is a 'doing' year, rather than a 'planning and researching' year like last year :)

lounge & dining rooms - photos at last!

We were supposed to have a playdate here today. Things didn't work out as planned (children still had the play, just not here), but we didn't find out about the change until after the big pre-visitors clean up of the lounge room. All in all, this was a good thing in the larger scheme of getting this place in something resembling order.

Hopefully the lounge room will stay like this for a while:

The furniture is all mismatched and the lounges are nearing the end of their lifespan; the crocheted blankets are daggy but warm and soft (and can be used to build cubbies and nests and all sorts of things!); the carpet could do with a thorough clean, but it's comfortable and, for now at least, it's tidy.

Oh - and the big hairy leg on the left is my gorilla, Coco, not the husband :P

And while we're at it, this is the children's computer desk in the old dining room:

They're growing fast, and we'll need to change it soon to accommodate full-size seats, but this is doing the job for now. There's a table in the X-man's room that might be able to come out here, and I think the computers will fit side by side on it, but that can wait a little while yet.

art supplies: before

I have carted various art supplies around in three milk crates for the past 15 years or so. Recently, the only thing that's changed about them is their location (they were moved to make way for the husband's electronics desk) and the amount of dust they've collected.

So now it's their turn ...

I can see (from the top): travel books and brochures (which I'm using in planning The Big Trip, but which can at the very least be tidied up); stickers (no idea how I ended up with them, but may be put to use in bribing children now I know they're there); a set of rubber stamps (can go in with the other cardmaking supplies in the desk drawer - which is yet to be sorted).

In the top crate: the cardboard box seems to contain beads and ribbons; a bottle of PVA glue of indeterminate age; face paint crayons; a silk screen squeegee (isn't that a great word? Squeegee!); a paintbrush; a tin of rubber cement (years old - may just need tossing); a red plastic bag containing a hot glue gun and glue sticks (which I am incapable of operating without getting strings of glue everywhere); a wooden box of artist's pastels; a large spool of orange giftwrap ribbon; and a signed 1997 Greenpeace calendar (from when I worked in the Sydney office).

In the second crate: plastic chocolate moulds; various boxes and tins of pastels, crayons, pencils and watercolours; a ceramic paint mixing palette; film reel canisters (also used as palettes); staple gun and staples; a magnifying glass in its box; a pencil case which I suspect contains special markers from my landscape architecture course at uni (which I finished in 1987, so I doubt they're much good for anything now); and possibly other stuff lurking at the back.

In the bottom crate: old tins of paint; can of spray fixative; jar of paintbrushes; tub of gesso; a yellow M&M tube filled with small ink canisters for a fountain pen; and more lurking in amongst the shadows and spider webs.


On the right hand side of the crates, beside the desk: the new home of the guillotine, and several large gift bags (too good to throw out, too big to put anywhere else).

On the left hand side of the crates: a paper bag of cardmaking items bought at a party plan event (with good intentions of making Christmas cards. Ha!); a blue eco-bag of books (have forgotton exactly what's in it, although I recall something about suicide bunny cards ...); spare shelf for the 'new' shelving unit (I'll eventually buy a second unit, so will just hang on to this one).

I would eventually like to get rid of the crates, or do something else with them (perhaps cubby house furniture?), but for now I'll pull everything out of them, clean all the dust off, sort out what's there and throw out anything that's no longer usable, and repack it so I can find things (don't know how many times I could have used that staple gun, if only I'd known where it was).

change in the weather

We had some quite hot weather last week (high 30s), but today the temperature has dropped 18 degrees in comparison, and tonight we're heading back into single figures. It's no wonder so many people have been sick lately - I hate to think what these sudden changes do to one's immune system.

Funny day today - a little work (and more tonight to catch up with what I should have done - oops!), some shopping (mostly back to school items, plus a new monitor because my old one was dying a slow and painful death), some playing with children and encouraging them on their new bikes (we've been very lax parents, and they're still on training wheels because they've done so little riding, but we're making up for it now), and some talk about how things have changed since I was a child.

It started off with one of those lines that most new parents swear they will never utter: "When I was your age ...". When I'd finished my little story about how easy kids today have it in comparison to *ahem* 35 or so years ago, Miss Tizz asked for more stories, and promptly fell about laughing hysterically when I obliged with a description of how I learned to ride a bike, at age 12 (hey - they're only 6 and 8, I'm not doing so badly after all!), and how all was going well until I wanted to stop but had no idea how. They wanted more and more snippets of my personal history - I had no idea they'd find it so interesting.

So I dredged through the memory banks for all sorts things - the first boyfriend (a younger man, in primary school, and my first kiss in the little cotton play tent in the backyard, with my brother watching - because it was his mate!); the sachets of free flavoured milk in infants school, left in the sun until recess, which 5-7 year olds were almost universally incapable of holding so the milk didn't squirt out everywhere when the corner was snipped off (mmm ... warm cinnamon milk all over you for the rest of the day); the treehouse in the oak tree in Wyong, the same tree another of my brother's friends fell out of onto the concrete driveway below - not a good day, especially for him); the kamikaze goldfish that would leap from the tank in the middle of the night; the time when my sister convinced my brother to teach her to ride his motorbike in the back yard - she figured out the throttle, but not the brakes, missed the trees, but not the shed, and dislocated all her knuckles.

Eventually I packed them off to bed with one final story of my then 3 year old brother, stark naked and escaping from the bathroom when mum let him go to turn the taps off - out the front door and down the footpath out the front, much to the surprise of a passing businessman on his way home.

They want more tomorrow - will have to see what I can come up with!

sewing and craft desk: after

The surface of the sewing desk is looking much better :)

The toolbox on the far end of the desk contains sewing-related items, and I cleaned the dust off the sewing machine and found its cover.

Please note I said the surface of the sewing desk ... I haven't even looked in its six drawers yet, although I seem to recall that half of them might contain the husband's leatherwork and other assorted tools, and half of them may contain sewing/craft magazine and papercraft equipment. I'll deal with all that another day - at least it's out of sight.

I also have an overlocker that needs a place to live - preferably accessible on the desk so I actually use it. If I can convince the husband to move his stuff elsewhere, I might try to stash all the papercraft (cardmaking/scrapbooking etc.; as well as what's in drawers, there's more in a large storage box on my shelves, so I'll pare it down so it fits in one place) items in the drawers, and only pull it out when needed, keeping the desk free for whatever my current project happens to be.

There are also a couple of blue plastic portfolios under the desk. I think they may be from high school and/or university days. I'll pull them out, dust them off and go through them. Might be fun to do this with the children.

invisible changes

I've been doing some more sorting and filing and tidying up today, but you can't really see any difference because it's all been on my computer.

I'm not particularly good at backing up files, but every couple of years (hey - I did say I wasn't very good at it!) I archive everything off my hard drive, clean up the disk, and (not surprisingly) my computer runs a lot faster. And then I vow to do it more regularly, but don't.

I keep everything - I've had clients come back several years down the track asking if I remembered 'that job you did for us', and whether I still had the original files so they do a new version without having to type the whole thing out again, because they didn't have it any more. So I keep it all.

So nothing too exciting, but change nonetheless.

Next decluttering task: sewing/craft desk

I like the idea of sewing. I have a sewing machine and an overlocker. I have a big sewing box with lots of sewing essentials. I even have a stash of fabric. But do I sew? No. Because of this:

Another pile of 'stuff'.

Ok, so we know the drill - make list, declutter, reorganise, clean ...

LHS of desk: pile of schoolwork (I've made a start on going through the workbooks, saving anything I really want to keep [and I've set up folders for each child, so it can go into them right away] and getting rid of the rest. Bulky items will be photographed before disposal), the little sewing kit that was on my work desk (at least it's on the correct desk now), newspaper (probably kept for something significant I can't remember), Guides sash and bag and badges that need to be sewn on (on the right desk, again), a scrapbooking album (yet another hobby I started, spent a fortune on, and then never looked at again), a small photo album (was supposed to be a Christmas present two years ago, but I didn't get round to it), a sketchbook, an Adobe Illustrator manual (can go onto bookshelf), and a couple of empty folders (can go with all the other empty folders until I need them). Behind the pile is a type size guide.

Middle of desk: sewing machine (+ a few loose screws, which hopefully aren't part of the sewing machine!). Roll of orange corrugated cardboard (not sure why I bought this - may just give it to the kids, and once it's cut into pieces and strewn all over the floor [inevitable, really] I can recycle it). Small scrapbooking cutter thingy (I seem to recall it never worked very well - will test and toss if no good). Work lamp.

RHS of desk: pile of fabric, old clothes I planned to recycle somehow sometime, clothes that needed repairs a couple of years ago and I never got round to (will go through the pile and ruthlessly consign to the bin or rag bag if too far gone, and wash, fold and stash anything usable where I can find it).

In front of the desk: large wooden easel (I want to eventually end up with a space where I can set up for painting. It's been a long time since I painted, and it made me sad to come across an old art workbook of my mother's from when she was at high school - she had some talent, but got too busy, and let it go. I don't want that regret.). The plastic bags temporarily hanging off the easel contain rubbish and recycling - they'll go. The fluoro tube is plugged in and hooked up to a timer when we go away, so lights come on and off. It can find a new home. The green cutting mat can probably sit flat on the desk when it's cleared up, as a work surface. The 'ditto' thing is a lid from a box of A4 paper (it can be re-homed near the printers). The boxes on the floor on the right contain card-making supplies and other papers (I'll go through them ruthlessly and dispose of items that aren't useful, and add the rest to the box of craft items on my shelves).

Under the desk: guillotine, another green cutting mat, and some sort of toolbox (not sure if this is mine or the husband's - will need to drag it all out to see exactly what's there).

It's not really as bad as I thought it was, now that I've listed it all out. Will report back when it's all dealt with and I have a functional space again.