well.... I did Y

And to be honest, in the end... X might have been a small part of the decision but ultimately I just really wanted to do Y for a whole range of other personal reasons. X was an excuse. But I didn't need one.

I feel like a weight has been lifted.

Today I resigned from my job. HOORAH!!!!

Decisions...

I said if X happened I would do Y.

Well it looks like X is going to happen. Now my logical mind is questioning my decision to do Y. But I think I need to do Y. Not just because of X, just for my overall sanity and life balance.

Have to go. If I make any life-changing decisions, you'll be the first to know. Well... you'll probably be more like the 17th to know but you know what I mean.

later x

Hi Ho, Hi Ho....

Well it was back to uni and back to work for me this week. I have to say that while it is only Tuesday so still very early days, I'm feeling surprisingly motivated and perhaps even quietly confident about getting through the rest of semester. Even if the rest of semester does involve a piece of assessment being due EVERY. SINGLE. GODDAMN. WEEK!

I'm calm. I'm in control. I've got a study plan dammit. I am the epitome of Serenity Now. I don't know if it's all that St John's Wort I've been dosing up on, or if the break really did me more good than I thought but whatever it is, I just hope it keeps up for the next nine weeks...



In other news to hand, Maverick left for Singapore today to do a hideously expensive course paid for by his company. It involved lots of pre-reading so he's been up at all sorts of crazy hours trying to keep on top of that as well as his uni course and his job. I honestly don't know how he functions during the day, but he does.

And Annabelle of course gets more and more gorgeous but you knew that already. I hate long days like today when she's in child care from 8am to 5.30pm. Not just because it's an awfully long day for her, but I miss her SO much and feel like I didn't get to see her at all. I'm still teeter-toitering around the idea of leaving work so I can cut down one of her child-care days. Funny that I never seem any closer to a decision about that. hmmm....

Animal Barn Fun

Miss Annabelle and I went with some friends to the Animal Barn this week. It's at Hahndorf about 20 minutes from the city. Hahndorf is a gorgeous little German-themed village in the hills. It has lots of specialty stores - puppets, candles, beeswax, alpaca wool... really niche type things. And of course being German themed there is a Birkenstock store. My favourite!

I wish I'd taken pics of the actual town because it is stunning at the moment with the autumn colours. The main street through the village has arching trees that form a canopy over the top and right now the oranges and yellows of the trees are amazing. It was a rainy day too so it would have been a gorgeous photo. Ah well.

Here are some pics of the animal barn anyway.

Umbrellas out, people.

I have to credit my Aunty Julie for these gems. I don't know where she finds this stuff. She clearly spends too much time on the internet. tsk.

So first there was this: (just watch it, trust me)



And as you are about to learn it was totally worth enduring, only so you can appreciate this fabulous piece of work.

A Gaythering Storm from Jane Lynch

Have you tried the hangman game yet?

Well have you? It's quite fun! I put these things here to entertain you so I hope you enjoy them.

This is a test

I just set up email posting and this is supposed to post straight to my blog.

If that's the case then WOWEE there'll be no stopping me. :-D

I love it

Stars of the Screen

I just uploaded a little photobooth video to youtube and now I'm seeing if I can embed it. Can you tell I'm having BIG FUN playing with my computer today? :)

My existential crisis

ok bear with me while I get some thoughts together.

As you know, I am a Life Coach. I have a website and blog for my coaching business. That website, which you will find here is neglected and boring. The reason it is so badly neglected is that:

a) As much as I love coaching, I don't have the time or energy to come up with inspiring "coachy" blog posts; and

2. When I do have time to blog, I prefer to do it here because here I can feel free to say fuck if I want to and whinge about my husband, whereas I don't think I could say those things on my "professional" website because it wouldn't be in keeping with the professional image I want to project.

My problem is that I am SO into social networking on the web and there are SO many ways to get your name out there if you use the tools but I don't want to link to my boring coaching website because it's ... well... BORING, and I don't want to link to this one because it's where I say fuck and whinge about my husband.

Which brings me to my point. I am a disintegrated self. *sigh* There is the real me and there is the coaching me and I don't like them being separate because they are not. They're all me.

What to do?

Moving in celebrity circles

I had to re-tweet Demi and it would be rude not to re-tweet without credit. It's not quite a conversation but y'know... it's a start.

And you should all watch the clip if you haven't seen it



Oh and Britney is following me. *faints again*

Starstruck

So now I'm Twittering for goodness sake, as well as blogging and facebooking and forum-whoring and of course chatting to friends via email and skype. Do I ever leave my computer? The answer is rarely. It is a totally Aquarian thing I swear. We are into gadgets and technology you see, and that is why I am not in the least bit surprised to learn that my friend and fellow water-bearer (and blogger) Nataliya is also a seasoned Twitterer.

So there I am on Twitter and I'm following Demi and Ashton and P.Diddy and Ellen as you do, and I was right there to see Oprah join today and be welcomed to the Twitterdom and Ashton got crowned the King of Twitter for getting his one millionth follower. It's all there in real time. And Demi is uploading video of the paparazzi and P.Diddy is complaining that it's lonely in the studio and Britney's manager is updating fans on her movements. Right then and there. In real time!!

When you read a person's tweet, you can comment on it and your reply goes to that person's page. (For the uninitiated, you just reply by putting an '@' symbol in front of their username and making your comment. Anyone can do it.) But do you think I can bring myself to comment on an *actual* famous person's tweets? My fingers go to jelly. It's as if they're standing right there in front of me and I get tongue-tied or in this case finger-tied. Because it's all well and good to make a witty comment, but what if they talked back? *gasp* What if I got into an actual conversation? Which clearly would never happen but that's the kind of crazy thought that goes through my mind. So nope... I can't do it.

Which is why I'm in total awe of Nat who is bloody well giving Ashton Kutcher tips on how to stop dogs barking, not to mention INVITING JAMIE OLIVER TO FOLLOW HER BLOG!!!!! Talk about CHUTZPAH! *faints*

The weekend that was...

I'm not too sad about the long weekend coming to a close because I have the next couple of weeks off, though I know that tomorrow will be a "work" day regardless of my being at home so it does feel like the holiday is over. It was nice to take some time out to relax and enjoy the last of the glorious weather and for Mav to be home for a change! Following is the pictorial update:

Miss Annabelle having her takeaway coffee at the beach (our standard Saturday morning routine)..





Then Sunday morning Annabelle hunted for Easter eggs.



When I told her the Easter Bunny had been and deposited the chocolate eggs all over the house and yard, she looked at me is if I was mental and said "No Mum, Dad bought them from the shop!" I don't think it's that she didn't believe me (I mean really.. it's a very plausible story that one about the rabbit getting into your house in the middle of the night, don't you think?) but more that the only chocolate eggs she's ever seen are from Coles and she couldn't quite figure out the difference.

Later we headed across the road to Pippa's house, where two fairy princesses had a lovely time together and grown-ups had a BBQ and a very laid-back afternoon.


We did an Easter Egg Hunt in the park with Pippa's older brothers, who quickly found all the easter eggs while I swear the two fairy princesses couldn't find an easter egg if it jumped out and whacked them on the nose!


But we made sure the goodies were distributed evenly. Fairy princesses admired their stash:


And then as if they hadn't seen enough of each other, Pippa came over to our house today and they played happily for about five hours!

We still have a mountain of chocolate in the house. What were we thinking?? We have ONE little girl who really does not need fattening up! I guess once you've got kids there's a tendency to go overboard with these things and I think we can pace the chocolate consumption over the next six months or so.

And then it was all over. And a good time was had by all.

What do you think?

I thought it was time for a new colour scheme and I changed the heading to fit more with the URL address, while still keeping with the "Serenity" theme? Did you spot that cleverness on my part?

It's a play on words you see. Belle Cass obviously referring to me and her, but the Italian translation being "my beautiful home". Get it? Except I'm not sure if it's supposed to be Bella Casa or Casa Bella. And if I have La, do I also need Mia? Is there an Italian speaker in the Casa??

Contriteness

Just before when I read the comments left on my blog by my aunty Julie (Hi Julie :-), and realised that my Aunty Julie can see my blog (well, I did give her the link after all), I actually sucked in a sharp little breath at the realisation that she can see all the SWEAR WORDS. I felt all caught in the act like I was in grade six getting sprung saying bloody hell. How funny.

I told you... MENSA!!

Yesterday I gave Annabelle a blank colouring page and some crayons to entertain herself while I got ready for work. As I passed back and forth through the living room, I occasionally glanced over and was happy to see her very engrossed in her colouring and noted that she seemed to be doing it very neatly. I thought nothing more of it, UNTIL....

An hour later when I dropped her at daycare, Lorinda (her teacher) said to me, "Cass! Look at this!" and she pulled down one of the kiddies pictures that was pegged up on the line and held it up for me to see. It was a colouring page with easter eggs on it and it was all coloured in. I said "Is it a painting?" and she said "It's colouring in, Cass." (duh) "It's Annabelle's. Look at it!!" and I was all "yeah, great..". I mean, so what? She did some colouring. Glad I'm getting my money's worth. She said "Look at all the others", and much to my surprise all the others were random scratches and scrawls and squiggly lines. Annabelle's was fully coloured in. Every egg was fully coloured and even though she had gone out of the lines, she had gone out of the lines very consistently, almost like each egg had a little fuzzy shadow around it. She said "I would expect this from a four or five year old". Well, I almost couldn't get out of the room my head was so big. You'd think it was me who was the best colour-inner, I was so puffed up with pride. Clearly I'm not biased after all. Even the daycare teacher thinks she's a freakin' genius.

There's more though. Did I tell you she recognises letters? (I can't remember what I've told you and can't be arsed going back to look). So for quite a while now, she has seen the letter "A" on various signs, number plates etc and recognised it as "Annabelle". At first we had no idea what she was talking about when she pointed at something and said "Two Annabelles! Look mummy!" but eventually we caught up.

Then one day while she was in the bath, we were playing with her foam letters and out of interest, I held up the "E" and asked her "What's this?". She immediately replied "Ebby". I went on to "C". "Cody", she said. "M". "Maddie and Mona!" I was blown away. As long as there's a kid in the daycare centre whose name starts with a letter, she recognises the letter as the name. So I've been using that to teach her letters and sounds and she's really catching on.

Then there's counting of course. We're up to 15. I know that doesn't make her a child genius but I was told that at daycare they are usually only counting up to five or ten, so somewhere she has learned on her own to get to 15.

And a few weeks back, I had another conversation with Lorinda, who was really excited at Annabelle's recognition of colours. Apparently they were playing a game and Lorinda would hold something up and ask what colour it was and always the first big voice to shout out the colour was Annabelle.

What do you think? Should I enrol her straight into university?

Pippa's Party

One of Annabelle's little friends from daycare turned three recently and we went to her party. During the course of a conversation about which schools might be good in the area (*faints at the thought of child going to school*) (IN ADELAIDE!!?!).. we discovered that Miss Pippa and her family live two doors down and across the road from us. That's Adelaide for you, but more on all things Adelaide (ie., 1.5 degrees of separation) later...

So Miss Annabelle and Miss Pippa have been having lovely regular play-dates together on the weekends, and we're planning a Sunday bbq with the family this weekend. It's nice to be making friends with normal people. It has also been lovely for me to have another little girl in my house back-chatting me and demanding to be picked up and asking for chocolate, because it reassures me that my own child is right on track developmentally.

So here are some party pics of the "in" girl's group.

Annabelle and Ebony:

Annabelle having a very intense conversation with Pippa's dad, after all the other kids had finished their cake and gone back to playing.

The birthday girl.

My girl.

A bunch of blonde trouble.

I had no idea that cliquey girl's groups started in daycare. I thought I had until high school before I had to deal with that. Perhaps primary school. But nooo.. at the age of 2, these girls hold seats for each other, shoo away other children who try to get near them and chop and change friends regularly. Apparently, during the lead up to this occasion, Pippa (far left) told Lily (far right) more than once that she was not her friend anymore and was no longer invited to her party. Annabelle tells me that Ebby is her friend and she does love Ebby (Ebony is, in fact, her best friend) and Maddie is her friend too, but Mona is not her friend. Mona is Maddie's friend, you see? Gosh, it's complicated.

Toilet Talk

This afternoon Annabelle asked me to take her to the toilet. She used to not like me holding her while she's on the toilet since she's quite the independent little miss, but since she almost fell in one day and I kind of left her there because I'd tuned out her yelling, she developed a bit of a fear of sitting on the toilet alone (go figure) so now she asks that I do hold onto her please if I wouldn't mind.

So there I was, squatting down holding her hands this time (she's getting more confident again now, so just her hands) and she's all sitting waiting for the poo and telling me what's going on. This is serious stuff for a not-quite-three year old, and all very normal, matter of fact conversation of course.

So she says to me "Mum, you're a silly poo-poo" and laughs, but quickly turns serious. "But we don't call each other poo-poos because we just do poos in the toilet. We don't SAY poo-poo, we just DO poos".

I replied to the effect that I was in concurrence. She thought about this for a while, gave a little nod and continued ".. and wees. We do wees in the toilet".

"Yes, we do" I said.. all the while holding her hands and waiting for the poo. She looked around the room a bit, lost in her own thoughts before she had another idea to share.

"Farties", she said. "We do little farties in the toilet".

"uh-huh", I said.

But then she thought better of that idea and corrected herself. With a little serious frown she said "Actually, I do my little farties in the bath". (sage nodding of head)

Of course. Where else?

Woah

Tomorrow is the last day of Term One. Thank Christ I made it this far, but up until now we haven't had too many assignments due and I think that's seriously the only way I've survived. As it is, with classes on four days a week, working whenever I'm not at said classes, and even with taking Fridays off work, I find that I do not have any time or energy left to do the stuff I need to do to pass this course. Like you know.. read something perhaps? Research? Let alone write anything remotely coherent.

So tomorrow I am doing my normal Thursday of work and uni and then I'm taking the two week uni break as annual leave from my job so I will have two whole weeks of free days. Hallelujah, there's hope for me yet. I've got an assignment due next week and another one due the first week back after the break so unfortunately there will be no lolling around in a hammock during this glorious "time off" but that's ok. I'm motivated. And I decided that being so motivated, I should look ahead at my schedule for Term Two so I can properly plan my time.

Well FUCK ME DRUNK if I haven't got an assignment due EVERY WEEK for the next nine weeks?! NINE!!

As Annabelle would say: Fucking JESUS, Dora!

*keels over*