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.

I'm over it now

When Mav first moved to sunny Qld I figured it would be no big deal since he travels so much anyway.

I was wrong. It is completely different.

He comes home for the weekend about every three weeks. That's two brief days home and then three long weeks in between that he doesn't get to see Annabelle or me and that I have to do it all on my own. He's practically missing a year of her life.

I have to admit it's ok when I need to do my uni stuff because it's easier when there's not someone else around trying to talk to me or watch TV or generally be distracting. I can be super focused when he's not here.

But the downside is that I have to do all the parenting on my own. All the drop offs and pick ups, all the baths and getting dressed, all the bedtimes and just the general answering all the constant "Why's" and responding to all the whining and the complaining and the arguing with every little thing I say (which seems to be a delightful four-year-old thing). All the setting up the paints and getting more water and taking the kitchen outside then bringing it inside and photocopying the colouring paper and getting out the play-dough and getting a drink of water, no cordial, no water, no not in that cup in this cup please, and making a sandwich, and negotiating whether she can have a marshmallow, and tying ponytails, no not one but two ponies, one up one down please and of course the never-ending picking up of mess that gets strewn from one end of the house to the other.

And of course she got nits this week. De-lousing, combing, checking for eggs morning and night and needing the negotiating skills of the UN to get her to let me do it because she hates having her hair wet.

And all the washing and folding. And putting the bins out and bringing them back in. Those are the things that Mav does and it usually annoys me that he is obsessed with washing because he normally just washes, hangs out, brings in and leaves me huge mounds of clean clothes to deal with when I was quite happy leaving them in the hamper with a lid on so I didn't have to deal with them. But now I'm so sick of washing I can't even begin to tell you. All I do is wash. And I don't know how many times I've almost forgotten the bins because usually I never have to do it.

So yeah.. I'm over it. I'm getting snappy and irritable and I seem to have a permanent head-cold just from being run-down and tired. I can't wait to be done with uni and then I'm taking six months off and lazing around on a big farm in Qld and taking daily trips to the beach with Annabelle before she starts school next year. I'm having one LONG holiday when this is all over.

Birthday photos as promised!

Very early in the morning. Table is set up for the party and presents are waiting to be opened!


ooh yay! A keyboard!! Hasn't been touched since the day of the party! But I haven't given up. I'll bloody make a musician of her yet dammit.

Obligatory early morning photos of mum and dad. Looking fab at 6am!


Husband got a bit creative with the doll's house....

And then it was time to par-tay!





HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY GIRL!! XXX

Even closer to being ready...

This shop is taking up a lot of my time lately. Well it's not that it takes up a lot of time - it's more that I have precious little spare time as it is (only the evenings after Annabelle is in bed) and I've been using that time to get the shop set up instead of doing other things.... such as my thesis.... or my neuro assignment....

So I'm going to have to open the doors with some basic stock and then just build it as I go. I had this idea of it being fully stocked but that's a bit unrealistic especially in terms of my own cash flow.

So the real site is up now and it's www.theveganstore.com.au

We had Annabelle's FOURTH birthday party on the weekend. Oh my goodness, where does the time go?! She had a party at home because I thought that would be cheaper. Silly me. By the time I got the party paraphernalia and the Tinkerbell cake and spent $120 on party food (which four year olds tend not to eat as it turns out..)I could have just as easily taken her to Groovy Chicks and Pirate Ships for the $300 they were going to charge me. Ah well.. I think we all need to have the home party experience just once. I'll put photos up soon!

It might not be promoting a meatless diet, but still....

... it's a great message. I think I'll be buying the DVD!

Not sure if you can view this properly unless perhaps you click 'Full Screen'. Otherwise, click the link below to go straight to the Website. And thanks Danielle for bringing this to my attention. :)



Food Inc. - The Movie