Category: A Whine

When laziness comes back to bite you in the butt

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It’s been on my to-do list for months.

– Register for Celebrant Ongoing Professional Development

I finally decided to look it up today and it took no more than 3 minutes to discover that there is an OPD session being held in Townsville TODAY starting at 9:30am. It was 9:44am when I found out. I thought maybe I could just turn up! But then I remembered Mum took Chanbe to the Aquarium this morning, so no car. (Did I mention Mum is visiting?)

Had I looked it up yesterday, there would only be a teeny tiny chance that I would have been able to enrol so late, but still, I think I’d be feeling a little less cheesed off with myself right now. It would have been such a great opportunity to meet other celebrants in Townsville, and to get an idea of which association would be a good one to join. And Mum just happens to be here right now, which would have been perfect. I really need to just get over it.

So after more looking around, it looks like I’ve missed all 3 sessions that have been held up here this year, and there are no more coming up. So I just ordered my ebooks online. Not exactly the most exciting way to complete my OPD, but maybe it will remind me to get my act together a bit earlier next year. Wherever we will be!

Sooooo slooooowwwwww

/ Renae / 3 Comments

We have lived in many towns and cities over the last few years and the internet service/connection/speed has varied dramatically in each place. The funny thing is, it seems the smaller the town, the better the internet. In Melbourne, we lived in Parkville, which is a stones throw from the CBD, yet we were in a black spot. We had patchy mobile coverage and terrible internet. When we moved to Wang, we couldn’t believe how much better it was! And then we moved to Mount Beauty, where the communications tower was quite literally in our backyard. That internet was ridiculously awesome. I always had a dozen tabs open at any one time and it could keep up with my multitasking like you wouldn’t believe.

And now we’re in Townsville. And all I can do is sigh. *sigh* I have been trying to write about our trip to Cairns last weekend, for the last 4 days, and include photos, and it just keeps freezing up on me. Even if it’s the only tab/window open, it just can’t handle it.

And the worst thing is, the only suburb in Townsville (so far) with the national broadband network, is just across the river. So close, yet so far. And so damn slow…

Brokety broke

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Okay, so we’re not broke. Far from it. But we drew up a new budget the other night and there really isn’t as much wiggle room as we were expecting, on a week-to-week basis. Hubs and I have been looking forward to this year for over 2 years (since I stopped working) as we would be, as we called it, “raking it in.” Turns out it’s not so much “raking” as it is slowly collecting in small amounts and seeing the money leave as fast as it’s coming in.

I think we were kind of kidding ourselves and it is finally hitting home that the next few years are really going to be (slow) building years. We are only on one salary, and a starting salary at that. People kept suggesting we were getting ahead of ourselves with all the excitement, but we couldn’t help it.

I know it’s really counterproductive, but I keep having thoughts of “if we were in Wang things would be so much better.” I happen to be fairly certain that if we had stayed in Wang, our thoughts would have been “we really should have moved somewhere different this year.” Well, maybe I would have thought that. But we would have been heaps better off financially (without having to move, and paying substantially less rent); I feel I would have been happier around my friends in Wang and closer to our Melbourne “family”; we wouldn’t be being harassed by our real estate agent (they are getting rude and nasty and we are fed up); Hubs wouldn’t have shingles; (oh yeah, Hubs has shingles and has had to stay home all week) and Hubs would have gotten more favourable rotations.

And maybe I wouldn’t be biting my nails again. Dammit.

But Wang was never offered, so there’s no point dwelling. I know that in a few years time, with some self-control and sticking to the budget, we can meet our financial goals. We just expected to be more comfortable earlier than that. But it will happen. Now that we have the budget I feel better about things already. I function much better when I have boundaries with spending, and we haven’t had that the last few months.

Sorry for the big whine. I guess I’m not quite over it just yet…

TGIF

/ Renae / 2 Comments

This week has been a nightmare a shocker challenging on many levels.

Level 1 – Chanbe has been waking up at 5:30am. Shocker. Hubs and I are NOT morning people, and an early morning for us is 7am. 5:30? Not cool. I am hoping it’s just a phase, though, with daylight savings starting this weekend, and us going to Queensland for a week from next Friday, I feel there will be a few weeks of disrupted sleep. Oh, and the whole moving interstate thing in 6 weeks time – yeah, that’s going to be completely hassle-free!

Level 2 – Even though Chanbe is still 7 weeks away from his 2nd birthday, I feel he has already turned a corner into the “terrible twos”. I really hate that expression though, because you’re just really setting yourself for disaster. I prefer to use our friend’s expression, the “terrific twos”. I like the positivity that implies, and even though some days may be terrible, I like to think there is more terrific involved in this age group. Plus I think Chanbe is pretty darn terrific 🙂

Level 3 – Hormones hormones hormones. I have been super emotional and a bit of a mess for a few days now, and the tears have flowed on more than one occasion. Not only this, but with all the relaxin floating around my body, my muscles have been particularly achy lately, and I’ve had sciatica pain and pregnancy-related tennis elbow. Have you ever had tennis elbow? It is not a pleasant experience, especially when you can’t take anti-inflammatories for it.

So all in all, these things have made for a very cranky Wifey. Thankfully, I have a very awesome Hubsband who has been taking extra special care of me this week. I cannot tell you how much he has saved me these last few days, and it just makes me feel so grateful that I have found a partner who will always do whatever he can to make my life happier. And today, I am happier. Which is good, since I’ll be solo parenting again tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Being left behind

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(Quick update: We’re back home in Wang! Woo!! It’s cold and rainy. Boo.)

For the better part of the last year, I have been getting around to updating/upgrading/overhauling my blog. I have considered, a number of times, outsourcing this job to someone who has a clue, but then my stubbornness (read: poverty) gets the better of me and I figure, “it can’t be that hard!” So I started playing around with a few ideas and in January, recruited my friend who is a graphic designer, to help me with my masthead, as graphic design is definitely something I have no idea about. And now that that’s done, I’ve changed my mind about the name, which means more work to be done that I can’t really do. Ooops. Plus I had to decide on who to host my domain name with (I don’t even know if I’m saying this right, let alone doing it right!!) which Hubs helped me with. We set that up today.

And now there’s lots of fiddly things to do that I’m trying to learn how to do. The thing is, I never used to be this useless. I used to know how to do things like edit photos, resize them and send them to people, and use programs like publisher, and I even did some intranet page designing in one of my jobs, but we don’t have mainstream software (we use open source software) and I’ve really lost a lot of my skills, as I just don’t practice often enough. Another problem is that we don’t have a designated computer space that’s ready to go at all times; ready for photos to be downloaded; ready for photos to be printed; ready for me to just sit down and get my sh*t sorted.

And I feel like the internet/blogging world is leaving me behind. It makes me sad. I feel like I have all this potential, but I’m treading water, waiting for all my ducks to line up before taking the next stop. The problem is, the ducks are in very real danger of getting run over as they sit in the middle of the road, waiting.

But today we set up the domain name. I’m hoping to do some tweaking on my masthead, and am hoping to be up and running in the next few weeks. If you have any tips for wordpress (where I’m moving my blog to) or having a .com, I’m all ears. I just keep thinking “surely it shouldn’t be this hard!!!!”

Aw maaaaan!

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It’s 11:46 pm and I’m sitting up watching the movie Good Will Hunting. I love this movie so much and committed to staying up til stupid o’clock to see the scene. You know the one. The “it’s not your fault” scene with Matt Damon and Robin Williams. Only problem is, a few minutes leading up to this scene, the stupid digital reception started going all blippy and cutting in and out.

The scene? Ruined. The reception? Fixed itself up during the next lot of ads. I’m not even kidding. So gutted. But what are you gunna do?

“What went wrong?”

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I’ve been watching the Olympics a lot the last week. Not as much as I would like as I value my sleep, but I’ve been getting in some great couch time. I’ve so far been quite impressed with Channel Nine’s coverage – they say what is coming up and they actually show that event, unlike Channel Seven’s debacle in Beijing! I’m not even minding the ridiculous number of replays of the same races over and over again. My only issue with the whole coverage is the interviewing. The number of interviews are fine, and the quality of the questions are generally pretty good, except one question.

“So, can you tell us what went wrong?”

What does that even mean? Why is there an implication that something actually did go wrong? As my Mum says, not everyone can win. And it’s okay not to get the gold. Sometimes a person does the best they can, or maybe they feel like they could have done better, but suggesting that something went wrong is such a cop-out. What answer are they expecting?

“Well I got a massive wedgie at the halfway mark and was so distracted I couldn’t concentrate on what I was doing.”

It’s not a question that needs to be asked as there is most likely no answer, and I imagine it would just make the athlete feel like they weren’t good enough. Like losing needs to be justified, or someone/something needs to be blamed for their “loss” instead of “well the person who beat me ran/swam/rowed/dove/kayaked better than me today.”

Oh, and another one I just heard:
“If you had your time again, what would you do?
Answer: “I wouldn’t do this interview.”

Not according to plan

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As I mentioned yesterday, our weekend just gone didn’t go exactly to plan. I headed down to Melbs on my own on Friday evening to attend a celebrant professional development session on the Saturday. When I was getting ready to go, I just had this feeling that I really wanted to stay home, and since I’m not generally very intuitive, it intrigued me that I felt such a strong pull to stay home. But we decided I was just being silly, and I just didn’t want to go because it was cold and dark. I headed off around 6pm and  stayed with our good friends (Chanbe’s Godmum and her family) and had a lovely evening catching up with them all Friday night.

Saturday morning I headed to the PD session, and although it was okay, it wasn’t as good as previous years. I told Hubs that it probably wasn’t worth me coming down for, but nonetheless, it was done and I was on my way home just after 3pm.

At 4pm, my engine warning light came on and the car lost power so I had to pull over. On the Hume Highway. At 110km/hr. Not scary, just annoying. I gave the car a few minutes, started it up again and took off. Only a few hundred meters down the road, it happened again. Damn. I called Hubs and he suggested a couple of things that I tried, but after the third time, I called roadside assistance. They were out within about 30 mintues and determined that it was an electrical problem and that I had to get the car towed.

Damn damn DAMN!!!! It was 5pm by this stage and I was in a bit of a state. I was still about 200km from Wang so I couldn’t get it towed there, so we decided to tow it to Kilmore and I’d try and get home on the train. Thankfully there was a train leaving from Broadford (just near where I was broken down) at 6:30pm to connect me with the 7:30pm train from Seymour to get me home by 9pm. The truck came at 6pm, dropped me off at the train station and thankfully all the connections worked out well. The train didn’t get in until 9:40pm, so I was home just before 10pm, in time to sing Happy Birthday to Hubs.

So here I am, with my car in Kilmore, and a phone number for the auto-electrician to call tomorrow. I’m hoping SO much that it’s not going to cost too much, but I guess it’ll be what it’ll be. The irony? I was going to book the car in for a service THIS WEEK to get it checked out before our big trip to Adelaide in a couple of weeks. But maybe it wouldn’t have been picked up in a general service. Who knows?

The only thing I know is, it could have been so much worse. I’m so glad that a) it didn’t happen on my way TO Melbourne the night before in the dark; b) it happened in an area that I had mobile and internet service; and c) it happened when Chanbe wasn’t in the car with me. Not exactly what I needed at this time, but you know. It happens.

My Weak

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It’s been another tough one, and I’m feeling it today. As is Chanbe. And Hubs. Hubs was actually away for 4 days and 3 nights this week doing exam prep, so I was doing the solo parenting thing. Let me tell you, it was hard. I don’t know how people do it on a long-term basis, and with more than one child. By Thursday night, I was counting the hours til Hubs’ return the following afternoon so I could collapse in a heap. Thankfully Chanbe was booked in to childcare for Friday morning, so I got to rest frantically race around the house tidying up and race around town to appointments and getting a few things done before the weekend.

We all had a great night sleep last night until Chanbe woke up at 5:30am, unwell and unwilling to go back to sleep in his bed. So the three of us had a fitful sleep for a couple more hours, then the boys got up and attempted to let me have a sleep in (bliss!) except Chance wanted his mama so the 2 of us ended up “sleeping” in our bed til about 9. The rest of the day was spent moping about (me), being sick and miserable (Chanbe), and studying (Hubs).

Perhaps tomorrow will be better for all?

Twas the night before deadline

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Hubs and I are sitting at the dining room table, sipping herbal tea (yes, we’re old) and pressing refresh on the computer. Intern applications are due tomorrow, and Queensland Health have a page displaying all the intern positions available at each hospital, and the number of applications that have been submitted. Our first preference of Cairns isn’t looking good. It seems everyone has suddenly realised how awesome it would be to live in a tropical climate. Especially those of us who are about to endure sub-zero minimums for the next 5 days. Yeuch.

Everything has been a bit ho-hum around here lately. We spent a few days back in Mount Beauty this week which was very up and down for me. We arrived on Sunday for church and ended up having lunch with the minister and his wife – they are 2 of our most favourite people we have met in recent times. Even though there are close to 3 decades in age difference, we are very close to them and have a lot in common. We then headed to the student accommodation to unpack and settle in for the few days to come. Hubs took Chanbe to the park for a bit of a play, and since he hadn’t had his day sleep, the little guy had a pretty early night which left Hubs and I to an evening of stew and Tin Tin. The food was better than the movie 🙂

The next few days were a blur of wind, rain, horrible weather in general, sore throat, coughing crying non-sleeping toddler, farewell dinner for the boys put on by the medical centre (a great night out) and not much sleep. We ended the trip on a high though, with beautiful weather and my second favourite breakfast in the world (second to the breakfasts that Hubs makes for me) of eggs benedict with fresh ham and locally-made corn bread. The drive how was nice, and apart from having to unpack and all that comes with it, it’s good to be home.

It’s hard to be in this headspace at the moment. Hubs is in stressy study mode; I’m floating about trying to keep my head above water; and Chanbe is (hopefully) oblivious to it all. I know I’ve been writing a few of these posts lately, but that’s just how life is at the moment. It’s kind of hard and kind of sucky, but we’re getting there.

Now I think I might splash out and have a hot chocolate, right after I press the refresh button…