January blues

Hola!

We got back from Queensland last week and have been slowly settling back into Adelaide life and mentally preparing for the year ahead. It's going to be a doozy but more on that later (no, I'm not having a baby) (although TWO psychics have told me to be EXTRA careful if I don't want to have a baby because there is a spirit baby hanging around me waiting to be born....).

We spent New Year's Eve across the road at our friends' house and we were home in bed by 9.30pm, just the way I like it.

Since then, we have been a bit miserable. I thought I might be sick since I've had no energy or motivation to do the things that need to be done around the place. The house is a bombsite and all I want to do is SLEEP! Mel thought maybe I should go to the doctor and see if I'm iron-deficient since I don't eat meat. But just quietly I'm pretty sure the problem has not been physical, but mental. I feel completely overwhelmed by the workload ahead of me this year. I've got nagging worries about ethics approvals and research projects and managing to get a placement since I missed out on one this semester.

Even though there are three weeks until I "officially" go back to uni, I've got that perpetual uni guilt cranking up again telling me that I should be doing something to prepare. I should be harassing someone about a placement. I should be starting my Lit Review (I really should). I should be cleaning out my office. When will I start Annabelle back at daycare? Should I be paying for daycare when she could be at home with me? Or should she be at daycare so that I can get back into work mode. Blah blah BLAH!!

I think the issue was compounded by Mel being home and "on holidays" until today. His being here was a reminder that it's all coming to an end very soon and life is getting back to normal.

But today he goes back to work and paradoxically, I feel a little lighter. I can get back into my own routine now; the one that involves me managing my days and my time and not feeling pressure to enjoy those damn holidays while they last. The gym is open normal hours and people are back at work so I can contact people and get things done instead of stressing about them not getting done. Hopefully my mysterious ailment will cure itself now.

Boarding

I haven't even posted an update on the fab Sydney trip and now we are
at the airport heading to sunny Queensland. Will post pics and stories
soon.

Bon voyage!!

Sent from my iPhone

My travels

On Sunday I'm heading to Sydney for five fabulous days to myself. I am going to see the Dalai Lama for a couple of days with friends from Queensland I haven't seen for AGES. A few friends are also Dalai Lama-ing so no doubt there'll be some lunches/dinners/drinks for catching up. I'm going to have a look at our house in Summer Hill and I'm going to catch up with Sydney friends for coffees and generally have a lovely child-free break.



On Sunday I'm attending my friend's 40th birthday/Divorce party. They are still in the midst of sorting out property and parenting arrangements and it's all a bit yuck. It's a shame it wasn't all sorted by the time she had her party. Check out the cake:



Then I will be back from Sydney on Thursday night and a week later, we all (me, Mel and Belle) will head to Queensland for our official three-week holiday. We haven't had a three week holiday in.... well since our honeymoon I suspect! We'll spend 10 days on the Gold Coast, a few days with friends on the Sunshine Coast, perhaps a day or two in Brisbane and we'll be in Toowoomba for Christmas.



I don't think I could be any more excited. Let the fun times roll.

Patience, grasshopper

I got onto eBay and bought a lens for my camera. It's a fairly standard lens except now it comes with Image Stabiliser (I.S) and the one I'm using is the one that came with Mav's camera 5 years ago and back then they didn't have I.S. It cost me $170, but if I bought it with my camera I would have paid about an extra $300 so I thought I got a bargain.

Also, apart from wanting the I.S. function it occurred to me that since I stole all Mav's lenses to use on my new camera, he actually can't use his camera. D'oh! How unlike me to be thinking completely of myself.

Here is the lens that I am patiently waiting to have delivered by registered post. Ok, there is nothing patient about my waiting. I paid on Sunday night and it was posted on Monday from Melbourne and it's still not here. I have checked the post box several times every day. I have called the local post office. I have re-checked the postage date with the seller. That lens had better be here today.





The worst thing about this whole experience (or the best thing, depending on how you look at it) is that I have discovered there are many, many lovely lenses on eBay for a fraction of the retail price. I could really spend some money if I had money to spend. Which I don't (darn being a full-time student). Another lesson in patience....

How remiss of me

It has been brought to my attention that I alluded to the possibility of relocating overseas next year and then never followed it up with details.

Well it wasn't really an accident. We still don't know anything definite which is why I haven't said any more (at least not on the internet). But it looks quite likely that Mav will take a job in the Middle East next year. This will pose a few dilemmas...

Firstly, I need to stay here and finish my Masters. So regardless of when he goes (possibly anywhere up to and including July??) we'll be on opposite sides of the world from each other for a wee while. I'm used to being a single parent but I kind of like that he comes home fairly regularly, so I'm not keen on this idea. I'm quite sure Miss Annabelle will not be thrilled either.

Secondly, even when I finish my Masters, I'm not sure if it will be recognised where we are going so I may have done all this work to not be able to practice. Hmmm.... that would be a bitch to say the least. I still have to find out more about that yet.

On the upside, it would be a great experience for a few years, there is a great ex-pat community so we'd have lots of friends, and coincidentally enough, even some of my Adelaide friends are thinking of going there. So I could just take the Adelaide crowd with me to Arab-land. :)

There is also good money to be made, of course. And there would be excellent schools for Annabelle.

There is restricted access to the internet and no Skype. And I don't want to give up my pots and plants and not be able to get a dog. (I'm back on the downsides now).

So if I spend too much time thinking about it, I'm like a pendulum going back and forth, back and forth deciding whether I'm excited or anxious. A bit of both. So rather than think too much about it, I'm focusing on finishing my course and having a very lovely holiday in Queensland in December. Will post details as they come to hand...

Hello, blog.

I've been rather neglectful of our relationship of late. I've thought about you, but given other matters higher priority. I feel badly about that.

The good news is that tomorrow is my final day of placement and for the most part, it has gone very, very well. I've learned some invaluable skills and I feel like I've really progressed a long way along my path to being a good therapist. Still a long, long way to go of course... but for now I'm happy with how far I've come.

So now I have one essay to write, and an ethics application to submit for my research project (so that I will be able to get cracking with my research in the new year) and that's it. My work is done for the year.

Except that the other wee jobby I have to get done is marking those FUCKING 2nd year assignments. argh! Whose stupid idea was it to take on tutoring this semester? The tutoring bit was ok. The money was so-so. The bloody marking though. Faaaaaaarrrrkkkk... it is never-ending!! At first it was taking me a minimum of 30 minutes to mark a paper, and then after marking a few, I was going back to re-check the marks I'd given. So really about 45 minutes per paper. Which might be ok except that there are 75 of the bastards to be marked!! I did some quick sums and realised that I DO NOT have a spare 40-50hrs up my sleeve.

So now I'm being ruthless and I've got them down to 15 minutes per paper. I figure no tutor or lecturer has ever been sufficiently concerned about the future of my academic career (or my feelings for that matter) to invest 30-45 minutes on any paper I've written. So 15 minutes it is.

When it's all done, I'll be back to share stories. For now, I'm going to bed to get some decent sleep because sleep is something that I've been sorely lacking.

Photo updates

I tend to post all my photos on Facebook and then couldn't be arsed putting them here (it's much slower here...) so I thought I'd post a few recent ones from ....first of all... our breakfast in McLaren Vale at the weekend.

I got a new printer

I know that doesn't sound very exciting but OH MY GOD, how much do I love my new printer?! I had a HP Multi-function thingo which I just realised is 5 years old. It cost me about $700 from memory. I know. No kidding. It had a fax machine that we don't use, a scanner that for some reason wouldn't work and it is noisy and slow when it prints. Being a uni student, I do A LOT of printing. But it cost me $700 so why would I replace it? And yes I know that they've come down in price but IT COST ME $700!!

Yesterday I was at officeworks and I saw a HP Multifunction PHOTO printer for $137. How bloody cheap is that? I've spent more than that in printer cartridges in the past six months!! I'm not even kidding. It's almost cheaper to buy a new printer than replace the cartridges?! (hmmm... maybe I really need a laser printer....)

ANYWAY, of course I bought it on the spot.



It doesn't have a fax which is fine. It does have slots where you can insert any kind of memory card or USB to print photos directly, a separate tray for photo paper, a preview screen where you can look at your photos and edit them before printing and it's so FAST and so QUIET. ooh ooh, and it prints onto CDs and DVDs. It's got a special tray that you whack them in and it prints labels directly on them.

It is now my second favourite thing after my new camera. No wait. My third favourite thing after my camera and my iMac.

But you've all got one of these special fancy things already haven't you? You're all going "DUH, Cass! Where have you been? OF COURSE we've got super-cheap, super-fast, super-fabulous photo printers". See, that's the beauty of it. The sheer excitement that comes with suddenly realising that something could be SO GOOD and never having heard of it before. I'm completely in love.

Annabelle's first sleepover

So you all know that Annabelle has a best friend called Ebony (Ebby or Bee to her friends). Ebby goes to a different daycare centre now but they see each other most weekends.



Ebby's mum, Carley, is great for organising social events so there are about four or five families that now regularly catch up for dinner, barbecues, the Fairies (reminds me I haven't posted Fairies photos!) and the girls love having things to look forward to on weekends. Even when there isn't a planned event, they usually are back and forth to each other's houses most weekends - often with three of them gathering at someone's house or the lot of them going from house to house while we parents take turns to do the child-minding or getting a break. It really has made all the difference for us to have a social network and to have the opportunity for a break occasionally.

SO... Ebby has been having sleep-overs for quite a while. Annabelle, on the other hand, has spent one night away from me in her whole life and that is when her dad took her to Victor Harbour one night over the Christmas holidays. We don't "do" sleep-overs. Annabelle wakes several times a night and I'm not at all comfortable with her waking up somewhere else and not knowing where I am. But she has been asking to sleep over at Ebby's house. We often go there for dinner and Ebby flakes it and Annabelle hangs out with us until we come home around 9pm. She ends up tired and grumpy the next day when she still wakes up at her normal 6am. So there was that.

I also started thinking that it would be nice for us to eventually be able to have a night out (like for our wedding anniversary) and to have her looked after by someone and not stress about it. We don't have grandparents or any relatives around so this has never been an option for us and I figure close friends are the next best thing. So I suggested to Carley that we *try* a sleep-over. Carley has been telling me for ages that Annabelle will be FINE and that she can sleep over any time. So she said "Sure, come for dinner Friday night and leave her here". Easy as that. EEEK!!

Annabelle was SO excited about sleeping at Ebby's house and told me that she is going to sleep at Ebby's house for "lots of days" and that she will come back and see me "another day". Good to know my place!

We had dinner and I put Annabelle to bed. Easy. Carley kept topping up my wine and since we weren't driving, I kept foolishly drinking it. What's with that? "Oh I don't have an excuse to not drink so I'll drink LOTS". I ended up feeling quite drunk and unwell. Bleuch. Maybe it was my nerves. Not to mention Carley is a terrible influence. ;)



We got home and I had the phone switched on and beside my bed. I must have told Carley 55 times before I left where Annabelle's clothes were, and what to do if she wakes up, and to call me if there's a problem, and that her swimming clothes were in a separate bag to the other clothes, and I just adjusted her blanket, and I put a pillow beside her in case she rolls off the mattress because she usually does, and she talks in her sleep so if she yells out, she might still be sleeping, and if she wakes up she won't go to you, you have to go to her and to CALL ME if there's a problem. Carley told me to shut up and get over it.

When I woke up the next morning - apart from having a hangover from hell - I couldn't help thinking how quiet and lonely the house was. Mel got up and started working on some stuff on his computer so it wasn't like we even got "quality" time together! Ok, it was nice to suffer in peace and lie in bed until 8am but I was annoyed with myself for drinking too much and not being able to enjoy our first morning EVER waking up on our own. First thing I did was text Carley to find out how it went. Annabelle slept through the night - called out once (in her sleep) at 5am but then woke up at the usual 6.15am. No tears. All good.

Eventually I got up and dragged myself to the gym and I picked Annabelle up at 11am. When I arrived they were playing in the park next door to Ebby's house. I gave her a big cuddle and asked if she missed me. She said very matter-of-factly, "No". Alrighty then.....

hmmmm... I'm glad it went well but I'm not sure I'll be making it a regular occurrence. It may be true that it's me who isn't ready and not her, but that's fine. I admit it. I'm not ready.

More dancing babies

They all love Beyonce! Check out this little rockstar.