Northey Street Organic Markets and other happenings....

A couple of weeks ago we ventured to a Sunday market we'd heard people talk about. It's one of those start really early in the morning ones so we hadn't been organised enough previously, despite out best intentions. But finally we got ourselves up and out and made it there before 8am.

WELL... I am in love with it. I've seen a few produce markets in my time but this one has the most lovely energy about it. I can't put my finger on what it is. It's just got a vibe. It's relaxed and friendly and quite big so there's a great range of products available. I kicked myself for not taking my proper camera so I've stolen this pic from the web...


I stocked up on organic fruit and vegies, bought a book for the princess, painted her in mud, had an organic fairtrade coffee and eventually wandered home again. oooh and I also got a lovely purple teapot and cups for my Buddha Tears tea, which I highly recommend if you haven't tried it already. :)

I did manage to snap a couple of quick pics with my iPhone.


We will definitely be going back there again. In fact after watching Food Inc. The Movie I am even more determined than I was to shop locally and buy organic! Besides, how much more relaxing is it to hang out and drink coffee and shop at your leisure on a casual Sunday morning than trying to fit it into a busy week?! :)

Having said that, Northey Street Markets are off the agenda for the next few weeks as I frantically scramble to get my thesis submitted on October 5th. EEEEKK!!!

Mav took the Princess to my parents' place on the weekend to give me the whole weekend to work on it, which was great AND he's going to do the same this coming weekend. I have a feeling I'm going to need every weekend between now and Oct 5th to get this thing done. There are four of them. Weekends that is. I've counted.

So if there is not too much blogging happening, you'll know it's because I'm buried under a pile of mindfulness papers but I will resurface in the near future.

Rugs A Million

So I've gone a bit crazy with the rug shopping. But there's nothing like a shaggy rug to brighten up a place, right?

The place is really feeling like home now. Mav built the coolest storage shed under the carport (more photos of that later) so we were able to move all the clutter out of the house and finally get tidied up and organised. We love this place.

Here are the rugs I've collected so far. I already showed you the green one in the lounge room, right? Here it is again, just so I can remind you of our amazing outlook. Who would know we were 6km from the city?!

This one was on sale at Ikea so I got it for my little study corner so it can double as my meditation space. Made good use of all the red cushions I turfed out of the lounge room!




We decided that we needed another green shaggy one for the bedroom so while we were at Ikea we got the same-same as the lounge-room.


But my absolute favourite is this fuschia one. The second I saw it I knew I had to have it. We've put it in the upstairs landing area, which is a funny kind of space that can't be used for much but totally needed a fuschia rug.

View from top of stairs..


And from our bedroom facing out to the balcony...

How good is that rug? Eh? It's FAB isn't it?!!

I still need another rug for the 3rd bedroom and maybe one for the front entry to the house. Mav reckons it's ok - we'll just take out a 2nd mortgage to fund my rug fetish. Money well spent, I say.

Had a placement, didn't have a placement...

So my placement got cancelled because it came to light that I don't have any of the required paperwork in Queensland. Up here, students have always needed to be provisionally registered to do clinical placements but not so in SA (though that has changed now because psychology will now have National Registration).

Anyway, I also need a blue card to work with kids and a Hep B vax (or immunity) to work in the health department.

All the waiting times were too uncertain so my placement got given to another student... and meanwhile I got going with organising all the paperwork.

Just when I was counting my blessings that the placement got cancelled because otherwise how would I ever get my thesis written up in time????......... they gave me another placement!! ARGH!!

So my only little window to get this stupid thesis done is the next two weeks before I start having to go to planning meetings etc etc.. and then however long it takes for my paperwork to come through. Because I can't actually start until I get that provisional registration.

If it takes 3-4 weeks I won't be complaining. I'm having little palpitations at the thought of how I will manage to do it all. My Literature Review AND my thesis are both due in... SEVEN WEEKS?! *faints*

In other news, Annabelle started at her new daycare. Not the one we went to look at because it turns out that she was as dissatisfied with that one as I was. So, long story short, we looked at a couple of others and picked a different one that was a bit more friendly. They call it "Pre-school" but really it's childcare with a pre-prep program. She kind of loves it but she is also very, very shy and nervous about being the new kid after having ruled the roost for so long in Adelaide. She has had a little cry most days she's been there. :( I hope she settles in quickly because it breaks my heart seeing that look of quiet panic on her face as I leave her in the mornings.

And of course the shop is back up and running. I was having some pretty major palpitations about that too, since it all came to a grinding halt while I was moving and then I had to outlay a heap of cash on more stock. I was actually awake at 3am wondering what the hell I was doing. But since sending out my last newsletter, sales have picked up again and I'm feeling a lot more confident that it might not send us completely broke. In fact.. I'm off to order more stock and run up some more debt. Hey... gotta spend money to make money. Right?

Got a house, got a placement

So we took the house with the big deck and LOVE it. I've moved into "green" mode and I don't mean I'm composting. I mean I'm loving the colour green. I've got rid of all my reds and oranges from the other house and bought a new shaggy green rug for the lounge, some green (and blue and purple and brown) cushions, a new green saucepan set and hung my new green painting on the wall. This house has such a green feel to it and I'm running with it.

Pictures....

Look - even green tea towels. :)

I raced out and bought this painting in Adelaide right before the packers arrived. I had no idea where we would be living but wanted to be among the trees so I figured this picture would work well. And it does! See how I did a little park bench underneath it? I should totally give away this psychology bizzo and be an interior decorator.


Loving the inside/outside flow happening here. Shame I can't get the really really high A-frame windows in the picture. They're fab.

Feral child in pink mucking up my colour co-ordination.


When we invited people over for a drink we realised we would need a new outdoor setting. So Mel went to Bunnings for the sixth time this weekend and got this one. It's going to get a workout.

And the view from the deck off the main bedroom. This is even higher than the really high back deck. It's waaayyy up in the trees.




And in other news YIPPEE, I got a placement. I'm glad we took this house because the placement is 5km up the road! Getting a placement sadly means I had to ditch the UQ Kindy (boohoo) because I can't manage with only two days a week and that's all they had available. :( I found a satisfactory alternative (not fabulous - your standard daycare centre) about halfway between the new house and the new placement. I'm not kidding, it's all basically off the same main road. I'm putting her in for 4 days because OMFG my thesis is due in like... 10 weeks. EEEK!!! *faints* So from next week it's all systems go.

That's all for now. I have to get the shop running again so I can pay for all that new green stuff.

Transitions

Have you heard of William Bridges' Transitions Model? Basically any change that happens compromises of three phases - Ending, The Neutral Zone, New Beginning. Sounds simple but what it means is that even thoughchange can happen overnight, i.e. you can move from one house to the next, change jobs, separate from a partner etc, the psychological aspect of change takes longer. This is where the three phases of transition come in.

The neutral zone is the hard part. It's where the old thing isn't relevant or existent anymore but the new beginning hasn't taken shape yet. So you kind of hang around in this strange limbo for a while feeling like nothing really fits or sticks. It can be easy to grab onto anything just to feel like you have a direction again but that can be a danger. You have to go through the whole uncomfortable nothing-ness of the neutral zone before you are ready to start again.

So I think we're just beginning to head into the neutral zone. We're going through the motions of finding a house, enrolling Annabelle at kindy, enrolling me at uni... but it all feels like I'm organising someone else's life because I haven't really got into the swing of anything yet.

So on the subject of HOUSE, we had decided to look out in the western suburbs for easy access to both UQ (since all three of us will be attending there on some or all days of the week) and my parents in Toowoomba. Mel found a great house at Jamboree Heights and it's all been approved but it isn't available until mid-August and I really feel like I want to be in our own place sooner rather than later. Staying with friends when you have a small child is quite an imposition and 3 weeks is too long to impose. I also want to unpack all my stuff and get my shop going again. So that, combined with the fact that I think the location is just a bit too far out for my liking means that I decided to spend a couple of days looking for something a bit closer before signing on the dotted line for Jamboree Heights.

I've found a huge HUGE house at Chapel Hill for a good price. Huge being four bedrooms plus rumpus plus extra storage room, 2 bathrooms, 3 toilets, double lock up garage. It's massive. Its downside is that it's quite "original" (brown and yellow feature strongly in the decor) but that's ok. The thing that mainly puts me off it is that I've never lived out there and don't know the area at all. I'd get to know it of course, so it's still an option. We are deciding whether to put in an application today.

The other one I've found is not so big but is a reburbished place in Alderley about six streets away from good friends of ours (the ones we will be staying with). It's handy to transport and shops and we know the area a lot better. It's just had an enormous deck put on it so even though the house is small it has a good outdoor area. Its downside is that it has zero storage space. No lock up garage, no shed. And only 3 bedrooms so nowhere for our camping stuff, bikes, Annabelle's old baby stuff (that I'll need for the next baby when the time comes) etc. But we think if we get a garden shed from Bunnings we can overcome that.

Our heart is with the Alderley one. Here it is:




We have put in an application on that one so we'll see how that goes. Both of them are available now so we could get our furniture brought up next week instead of waiting three more weeks.

In other news, we took a City Cat ride to the uni yesterday and took Annabelle to see her new kindy. She will go 2 days a week to Campus Kindy. It's a proper C&K kindy program but with long daycare hours (bonus) and it's next to Mel's building so very handy, especially since I'll be doing some study at UQ too. She absolutely LOVED it. Even though we were just popping in to introduce ourselves, she wanted to stay. Bless! The teachers are all 4-year trained and the centre is all based on the Reggio Emilia philosophy. I just wish she could have started at this place earlier and got a full year there before going to prep next year. Her old daycare was great but much more academic in its focus whereas I really love the 'engagement and empowerment' approach to learning that this centre focuses on.

So she will start next week and I start uni the following week. Still no placement for me but I have a subject to do and my thesis to write up so I'll be busy enough. Not to mention re-opening my shop which was going great guns before I had to close it. In many ways, doing my final placement over Christmas after I hand in my thesis would make life much easier.

But now I'm rambling. I should blog more often so I don't have so much catching up to do. :)

We are off to hand in kindy enrolment forms today then some girly shopping in the mall. Hopefully we will hear about a house and arrange for our stuff to arrive next week. And then I can start getting on with those new beginnings and get out of the yucky neutral zone, thank you William Bridges.

So had I decided to stay in Adelaide to finish my degree...

Adelaide Uni wouldn't have had a placement for me next semester.

I'm not even kidding.

They were short of placements and had to rationalise so I got *ahem* let's just say prioritised to the bottom of the list. Can you honestly believe that? I honestly CANNOT! So they have most certainly got a placement for me in October which is very helpful.. not!!!

I'm taking it as a sign that I was absolutely supposed to go to Queensland in July, which of course I am doing. You know what though? They didn't even call to tell me. I had to call them to ask what was happening. Had I not already been making plans to move to Qld, what the fuck would I have done and when would they have told me? It does not even bear thinking about.

SO.... 3 more days of placement, 2 more weekends and then HELLO packers. I'm so BLOODY excited.

And the wheels crank into motion again....

ok so now I remember writing that post below.

UPDATE:

Head Honcho at U of Q is back. I updated him on my progress which has slowed somewhat in the past 2 weeks that he has been away. All his troops have snapped to attention it seems and things are happening again. Short version is that there is an option on offer from UQ but it requires Adelaide to pay some cash to UQ for their services.

Waiting to see if Adelaide agrees which they won't. But even if they don't, we have offered to pay UQ for their services out of our own pockets. So surely... SURELY... it has to work.

Getting removalist quotes in the meantime because if we are going (and I think we are going) it will happen in .... wait for it..... FOUR WEEKS! :-0

I'm so bloody excited.

Guess who has finished Semester One of 2nd year?

Yippee!!!!! I attended my last lecture on Friday. I have about 4-5 weeks to go on this current placement and then I'm off to sunny Mooloolaba for 5 days of R&R with husband and child. I can't wait. :)

I am a little bit amazed at how quickly the first half of this year has gone. Even if things don't pan out and we can't go to Qld in July (more on that later), I feel reassured that the 2nd half of the year is going to fly by just as quickly. How bloody exciting to be almost finished my Masters! :-D

The waiting is torture

Things have settled down here somewhat and it was lovely to have husband home for the weekend. Even lovelier that he got a taste of the less-than-lovely Miss Annabelle. Such a contrast to what she's normally like, so at least he knows now that I'm not actually making it up. She's definitely not her usual laid-back, easy-going self these days... though right now she's playing happily in the bath on her own so she's not ALL devil-child.

But I've got it in my head now that we'll go to Qld in July. That's it. Decided. And I would like all the necessary approvals and paperwork to be done... errrr... yesterday if you don't mind. Patience is not my strong point at the best of times and right now time is of the essence. So of course the head honcho at the U of Q is overseas for 2 weeks and our program coordinator here at U of A was not available today. Things are not progressing at the lightning speed that I would prefer.

The only thing to do is to use this as a practice in mindfulness.



Just this breath in....

I got a feelin'...

.. as the Black Eyed Peas would say. Speaking of which, if you haven't seen the clip below.. do yourself a favour. But before you get side-tracked with that, how's this?

I keep doing my cards and I keep getting the Tower. For those of you who don't know, the Tower means everything being turned totally on its head. Sudden, unexpected change of the hugely chaotic kind. BIG change. Sometimes catastrophic, sometimes not. But either way, not something you'd expect.
I also get a lot of moving cards (fairly self-explanatory given the upcoming move to Qld) and a lot of happy cards. So my interpretation of all this was that while I'm coasting along thinking that I'm going to stay in Adelaide until the end of the year given that all my investigations into moving up earlier have come to a big fat NOTHING, what's the bet something sudden and out-of-the-blue is going to happen which means we can go earlier? I think I might have even said to my friend Carley that I reckon I'll get an offer in June and have to be gone by July. That would be the Tower.

Fast-forward to now and I had a bit of a melt-down this week. Annabelle has turned into some rampant feral child who I feel like I don't even know and I've turned into an angry, intolerant mother who I feel like I don't even know. I called husband and told him that this is not going to work and I'm pulling the pin on uni and will finish it in Qld next year (ok, possibly a slight over-reaction on my part and may or may not have been influenced by hormonal instability but never mind that).

So Mav being Mav and all firing off emails and punching out letters got straight onto the head of program at UQ, introduced himself as a new member of staff and asked for help with our relocation.

WELL... are they rolling out the red carpet or WHAT?! They could not be more helpful if they flew a private jet down to collect me.

So there will be some logistical nightmares to sort out and all of this still depends on Adelaide Uni approving my final subject up there, but it is looking very promising indeed. Did I mention that the only week I would have to move interstate (pack up, move house, settle child into a new kindy, settle me into a new uni, find a new house, not to mention move the whole shop that I've worked so hard to set up here... ET CETERA!) is the very same week that I have booked a non-refundable holiday at the Sunshine Coast? That is the Tower.

Fingers crossed it all works out. Then I'll be getting these ones...



And now you can watch the Black Eyed Peas.