Category: Life as a Wife

Counting my blessings

/ Renae / Leave a comment

The Spirit

Since Hubs and I arrived in Melbourne, God has been working hard to make sure we settle in okay down here. Actually, he seems to have been working overtime to pre-arrange things and ensure that everything works out for us, just as HE planned, not us. If I had my way, the following would have happened:

Hubs and I would have found a place to rent in the Moonee Ponds area
Which means:
We’d be paying around $300 a week in rent
We’d be paying around $70 per week in food
We’d be paying around $50 per week in transport
Plus bills
I’d have 2 part-time jobs and half a day off to chill-out
We’d find a nice Uniting Church with some young adults hopefully near our place

And here’s what REALLY happened:

Hubs and I were offered a place at Newman College
From day 3 (yes, it took 3 days) we have felt very welcomed and included and accepted in a tight-nit, open and inviting community
We pay very reasonable rates for accommodation, all meals and all bills
We live right next door to uni which means no regular transport costs for Hubs
I have accepted a full-time job at Newman College which means no regular transport costs for me
We live 1 suburb out of town – less than 2km from Central Station
We worship at the Chapel of the Holy Spirit at Newman College and we’re really enjoying the services
We’ve met some amazing people and had interesting conversations over good food and great wine
Hubs and I get to spend heaps of quality time together, as we have no travel time to factor in to our days
Life is good.

I spent so much time and energy (and tears) on worrying and stressing about homes, jobs and money, and surprise surprise, God had it all under control the whole time. And he does this to me ALL the time.

When am I going to learn?

A small insight

/ Renae / 4 Comments

The Spirit

I feel like I’ve been being a bit airy-fairy on my blog. I also feel a bit censored. It’s like when I used to write in my diary, and I’d be scared to write what I REALLY felt, in case someone read it and thought I was a nutter, or in case they got offended. It turns out that I AM a nutter, but only a little bit. I still think I hold back a little when I write in my current diary. I guess I just can’t help it. Maybe I should try and be a little more out there and honest with the world. My friend once told me that I was one of the most self-aware people she knows. And I am. I’m aware of my crazy thoughts as I’m thinking them; I’m aware of my irrationality at times; even as the craziness is escaping from my mouth and eyes and nose, I’m thinking to myself “Noooooooooooo…. don’t doooooo iiiiiittt”. What’s the use of having self-awareness, when I have no self-control?

It reminds me of the Scrubs episode where Elliot starts dating Nurse Flowers and is trying to act all normal around him. Then one day, “the crazy” just bursts out of her and she spills her guts all over him. And even though she thought it would completely turn him off, he just digs her even more.

I think I come across all together and composed, but really my head is constantly racing with a million thoughts and feelings and insecurities and insane assumptions about people. I’m so hard on myself and am constantly assessing and re-assessing and trying to figure out my place on this earth. And then once I figure it out, I doubt myself, and the whole process starts all over again.

I often wish I was one of those confident, super-cool chicks who seemingly run their lives with perfect precision, knowing exactly what they want, and how they’re going to get it. But I wonder if they have the same crazy thoughts running around in their heads. Maybe if I WAS like that, Hubs wouldn’t have fallen desperately in love with me. Maybe I’m lucky that he finds my craziness endearing. Yes. Very lucky. And so very blessed.

So maybe I need to embrace this characteristic and let myself be myself, within reason of course. Except for once a month. Once a month I have neither control NOR awareness of what comes out of my mouth.

Stay tuned for more crazy to come.

Nerdy McNerd

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I got in touch with my inner-nerd last week and attended “Game On” with Hubsband; “Melbourne’s must-see exhibition of 2008 – the action-packed celebration of games culture that has thrilled over one million players of all ages around the world. Game On tracks the development of videogames from the first computer game to arcade-era hits and the very latest from today’s billion dollar industry.” Make that one million and two players!

I was a little skeptical at first, thinking it was going to be another nerd convention like SupaNova but I was pleasantly surprised at the number of normal people there! (Ha ha. Sorry honey. Just cos you’re a nerd, doesn’t mean you’re not normal.) But seriously, there were children, girlfriends, wifeys, mothers (mostly carrying around jackets and sitting around waiting for hubsbands and kids to get tired) and everyone in between. And the games! We got to play quite a few different games including:

Pong
Frogger
Mario Cart
Star Wars (the arcade game with the vector images)
Tron arcade game
Puzzle Bubble
Gravity
Donkey Kong (game and watch)
Indy 500
Adventure on the Atari
Populous
Chillingham

… just to name a few! There were quite a few people there but there were also quite a few games to play so there was always something to do. We even ran into Yahtzee, but we almost didn’t recognise him cos he wasn’t wearing his trademark hat.

We also checked out the game consoles that had been made over the last 36 years which was actually quite interesting. We finished off with about half an hour in the theatre watching the “Machinima Showcase” which is a “new kind of filmmaking that uses computer games technology to ‘shoot’ film.” Yeah, I found it boring too but Hubs enjoyed it. It gave me a chance to have a rest, so I was happy.

We were there for 3 hours, then I decided it was time to go home. I was all nerded out for one day!

Hubsband playing Populous

Wifey posing with Lara Croft. Yeah, I think I’m heaps better looking too…

The Hickey. Friend or foe?

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The thing about being married to a 22 year old (or someone who’s 27 who still THINKS he’s 22) is that every now and then Hubs thinks it’s HILARIOUS to give me a hickey. When we first started going out, I was mortified by this, however I soon got in to the spirit of things and started giving as good as I got:


I was actually pretty good at it! This was one I gave him for his birthday last year just before we were leaders on a kid’s camp! (Actually, I think there are 2 hickeys there!!! Yeah!)

And here’s Hub’s most recent handy work at our going away party in June:


But I reckon he’s losing his touch. (Can you even see it?) Although that might mean he’ll want some more practice. I know I’ll probably regret saying this, but hickeys don’t really bother me that much anymore, as long as I don’t have an interview or a special occasion coming up. Plus Hubs gave them to me so often at one stage that it was normal to see Wifey sporting a new hickey at church each week!

So thank you, dear Hubsband, for keeping us young and completely unclassy!

(To learn how to remove hickeys, click here, though I’ve never bothered with anything other than make up!)

Dread Head

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One of my goals this year was to learn some new skills. Some things I had in mind were to do a sign language course, to get back in to some sewing, and to perhaps try my hand at a new sport. What I DIDN’T have in mind was learning how to give someone dreadlocks.

Hubsband: Honey, I’ve wanted dread locks for a while now, can I get them?
Wifey: Sure, how much are they?
Hubsband: $500 to get them done at the salon….
Wifey: $500??????????
Hubsband: or $150 for a DIY kit that you can buy on-line which means you could dread my hair! Wouldn’t that be tee-yodally awesome?
Wifey: Ummmmmmmmmmmmm….. sure, okay….

So the kit was ordered, and on ANZAC Day 2008 (a Friday) we began.
Before we begin: Say goodbye to Hubsband’s beautiful, untangled, luscious hair (sniff)

Step One: Section off the hair in to 1 inch squares and put them in rubber bands. I made 70 sections, a perfect 35 on each side. (2 hours)


Step Two: Spray the hair with Locking Accelerator – stuff that knots your hair up good and proper (5 minutes)

Step Three: Backcombing. Now on the instructional DVD, it takes about 5 minutes to explain this process, but takes a lot longer to do. Basically it’s teasing the hair, but in a gradual way so as not to create big messy clumps of hair. It takes about 100 strokes per inch of dread, and some of Hub’s hair was 14 inches long!! I managed to get it to about 20 minutes per dread which I was quite happy with. Here are some of Hub’s first dreads:

Now before I go on to Step 4, let me give you an insight into our “dread week”:
Friday: 12noon til 9:30pm – Sectioning, backcombing, finished 14 dreads (my hands were like claws when I went to bed – I could hardly move them. But they were okay on Saturday)
Saturday: 8:00am (Hubs made me a cooked brekky to start the day off) til 3:00pm – 15 Dreadlocks. Then I went to a hen’s night!
Sunday: 7:30pm (late start) til 10:30pm – 7 Dreadlocks
So by this stage Hubs had half a head of dreads. AND he had to go to work on Monday morning! Tee hee! We really thought I’d be finished by now, but we were only half way through.
Monday: 4:00pm til 10:30pm – 17 Dreadlocks (and Wifey was getting a little tired of this by now!)
Tuesday: 5:00pm til 10:30pm – 14 Dreadlocks. I only had 3 to go but just couldn’t do it that night
Wednesday: BLISS!! Finished the last 3!! Or so I thought….

Step Four: Waxing the little friggers. Each dread had to be waxed and rolled which took about an hour. Then they had to be blow dried so the wax really soaks in. That took another half an hour. And low and behold, Wednesday night my Hubs had dreads. Total time physically working on them (excluding breaks): 33 hours.

And since then he’s had heaps of comments on how awesome they are (not just from me!) They do look really great actually. And because all the hair gets caught in them (eew) it doesn’t fall out all over the place! Hooray! I must admit that I feel a sense of pride when Hubs tells people that I did his hair for him. It’s certainly a new skill that I’ve learnt! Oh, and I NEVER want to do it again!

Trebu…what?

/ Renae / 4 Comments

Question: What is a trebuchet?
Answer: A medieval military catapult for hurling heavy stones

Up until a few months ago, I had no idea what a trebuchet was until a good friend of my Hubsband’s (who should have known better and shall remain nameless) emailed around an ad advertising a trebuchet that was for sale. He did this as a bit of a joke, but Hubs thought it would be a GREAT idea to get a few mates to pitch in and buy the thing. Why? To fling stuff in the park behind our house of course!!

So the planning began and after a few false starts, a trip was made by one of Hubsband’s other crazy friends to pick the thing up. Upon arrival however, they saw how HUGE this contraption was and realised they had bitten of more treb than they could chew. Now when I say huge, I mean huge:

Click here for more information
The dimensions are:
Width: 2m
Length: 2.2m
Height: 5m (including the “throwing arm”)

After some negotiations, crazy friend instead purchased the prototype that the guy used to build the larger one which was much more manageable:

By around 2pm on that lovely Sunday afternoon, about 20 blokes (not including the original nameless friend who saw the ad in the first place!) in various medieval get-up had descended upon our back yard and were keen to fling! We headed to the park and proceeded to set up the treb as well as a target to hit. It has a range of about 30 meters so that was a bit less scary than the original 100m range of the larger model.

A fun time was had by all, and once the beer and bbq had wrapped up and the light was fading, of course it was decided to set fire to things and fling them!

Thankfully the police remained blissfully unaware of the event and the trebuchet is sitting quietly in Hubsband’s Mum’s garage.

Til we fling again….


The flingers

Our life fits in a Kombi

/ Renae / 2 Comments

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hubs and I have been talking about starting a Blog for a while now, so here it is! Exciting, I know! We have just moved from sunny Queensland down to windy… rainy… sunny… windy… (etc) Melbourne so Hubsband can begin his course in Medicine.

We managed to cram everything we need to live off in the family Kombi which was unbelievable and exciting! I took a look at what we had to fit in and said to Hubsband “honey, there’s no way it’s all going to fit!” To which he replied “dearest Wifey, trust me!” So I did and boy was I impressed! We had an excellent 5 day road trip down and thanks to everyone who let us crash in their spare bedrooms. We are now looking for somewhere to nest in Melbourne so we can unload the car and get on with our new lives down here.

Of course I am going to try and write a couple of times a week so feel free to give me a few tips if you’re an experienced blogger! (or if you’re just a smarty-pants know-it-all!)

Let the blogging begin!