While the cat's away...

I've had lots of things to tell you all, but I've had no time to tell it!!!

The Big Fella was away fishing for a week.  So, to keep myself from getting sad and lonely, I planned a few things to do.

I've cleaned almost as if I was moving house (we're not, by the way) including exhaust fans (bleuch!) and windows (double bleuch!).

I've woken up my (very sleepy) craft bug.  I think it's the time of year.  Halloween is a little bit of a deal here in our little town, so I've made some paper mache pumpkins, I'm still working on some luminieres made from tin cans, and I need to paint my window silhouettes.  I'm also working on a costume for the school fair/ladies' pink night/Halloween walk.  And all of that gets me excited about Christmas so I've been planning and buying stuff for that too.  But there'll be more about my crafty capers in another post (possibly next week).

And what else should you do to fill in time without your husband, but hang out with friends???

We've had playdates and craft sessions and buy-at-home parties.  And I had a few of the girls around for an evening on Friday.  No, there'll be no telling!  But I think it's okay to say that none of us has had a late night drinking and laughing with the girls in a while, and it hit us a little hard the next day.

I have to say that I have some brilliant friends, too!  I love that we talk about a wide range of things and we can say some pretty outrageous stuff and not be shot to pieces for it.

And laughing!  Oh my goodness I love laughing!!!

But I often get so caught up in the busy-ness and stress of daily life that I forget to see the funny stuff.  Life shouldn't be so serious!  Keep reminding me about that, okay?

It was my nephew's 5th birthday the other day!  I got to talk to him on the phone and I miss him (and his brother, my sister and brother-in-law) so much!  That's definitely one of the sucky things about living away from family, and friends too.

The school is running a fair this Friday and I've offered to do balloon animals for them.  I was trying to get my juggling skills back in time, but it just hasn't happened.  I think I stress out about it too much and end up throwing the balls all over the place!

I'm excited to do some kid-based stuff again, though.  It's been quite a while!  I'm hoping to get half an hour to practice some of the trickier ones before then.  Or at least jump online and look at a few!  I think my very basic repertoire of a dog/giraffe/monkey/elephant and a sword won't quite cut it.

We're off to the big town 2 hours away tomorrow.  The Big Fella has a specialist appointment for the first time since we moved here.  It's been very exciting lately, because his most recent pathology says that his weight loss and exercise are improving his kidney health, significantly reducing his potential need for intervention.  I just about did a happy dance in the doctor's office when he said that!

While we're over there, we're going to be doing a spot of shopping (hello Spotlight (fabric/craft store) and Bunnings (hardware store)).  Just a tad excited about that one.

Anyway, I need to go finish the dishes and get to bed.  The Big Fella is working tonight so there's a decent possibility that I'll be driving tomorrow.

Okay, side note:  I want to kill my dogs!  Obviously not literally.  But when that stinking cat comes by every, single, night, and they bark like there's no tomorrow every, single, night and it doesn't matter what I do they do it EVERY, SINGLE, NIGHT.  Sheesh.

Right.  Time to post this (sorry, it's been a while and this really hasn't been a very exciting post) and get to bed!

Damn you, hormones!

We had a wonderful day today.  We took a drive to our nearest "big" town, did some shopping, had a lovely lunch then came home and spent the afternoon/evening with friends.

That's if you take out the damn hormones that side-swiped me today!

I got up this morning and did my workout.  No worries.

Got ready and we drove to town.  No worries.

Got there at pretty much the exact time we wanted to.  No worries.

Started looking at a new mobile phone for me (my contract is about to end).  No worries.

Went to Big W and picked up almost everything on my list.  So far, so good.

Went to the other phone company to look at mobiles.  The Big Fella took off to do check out some stuff and left the Little Big Fella with me.

No worries.

Until 10 or 15 minutes later when the Little Big Fella wasn't getting enough attention and started jumping all over the place and whatever else, scattering all coherent thoughts and causing my stress levels to rise.

Okay.  Finished up the conversation, having got the info I needed and headed to the next place on my list.

The Big Fella catches up with us and asks a question about the phone place and I nearly tore his head off.  What the???

I apologise, explain what happened and we move on.

For the rest of our time in town I was on the edge and every little thing the Little Big Fella did just about drove me nuts.

We did have a nice lunch though.

When we got back home, we unpacked then headed to our friend's place to chill out.  After about half an hour I was daydreaming of sleeping on the grass and feeling sick in the stomach.

I ended up coming home and trying to sleep but had a very restless nap.  I'm pretty sure I was having nightmares but I can't remember.  Eventually gave up, got up (still feeling completely wrecked and sick), watered the plants, fed the dogs and prepared some dinner then took it back to our friend's place.

Had a lovely dinner with them then came home.  The Fellas went straight to bed and now I'm nearly sleepy enough to join them.

I just hate it when my hormones attack me and ruin what would have been an awesome day.  And even though I spent the whole time fighting them, I just wasn't winning at all.

Bleuch!

An introvert's paradox

I am an introvert.

And I love hanging out with people.

I love playdates, and girl's nights out, and dinner parties, and BBQs, and events, and movies, and restaurants, and just being with people.

But when things get busy, or tough, or overwhelming, or confusing or whatever, I need time to myself to refresh and regroup.  To re-set myself to take on life and the world.

Which is kind of how I'm feeling at the moment.  Life has been busy these past few weeks.  Full of fun stuff like playdates with water-based jumping castles and slides!

We've been to parties for birthdays and footy finals.  We've spent plenty of awesome time hanging out with friends.  Being the school holidays, the Little Big Fella has been home so we've had a sleepover and friends over.

It's all been absolutely awesome and fun.

And because of all this awesome fun-ness, my normal routines haven't been working for me and my most productive time of day has been filled with other things.  Which leaves me feeling overwhelmed by the mess in my house (particularly the dust!) and the long list of things that need doing that I just don't seem to be getting to!

Which, of course, has me mildly stressing because I'm supposed to start working soon and I'm wondering how that's going to work out.

The Big Fella is about to go off on a Northern fishing adventure for a week.  I'll miss him heaps, but at the same time, I'm kind of looking forward to having the chance to catch up with myself.

It's kind of funny though.  Time by myself, refreshing and re-setting normally includes a whole new bunch of "to-do's".  But because they're often craft or organising, and I can set my own schedule and pace, it works for me.

I'm working on some Halloween paper mache pumpkins, and I have some sewing to do, and a costume to create, and some balloon sculpting to practice...

Hmmm, maybe I need a holiday! ;-D

Attitude and effects

Yesterday the Little Big Fella and I went and did some supermarket shopping to re-stock for the long weekend.  We also stopped in the discount store for a few bits and pieces.

While we were there, another customer happened to have an armful of items and dropped the lot all over the floor.

Know what my Little Big Fella did?  He said, "don't worry, I'll help you pick them up"!  And he did!

In that moment I was super proud of my boy and felt like I'm doing a pretty decent job as his mum.


This weekend our neighbours have family staying over, and the Little Big Fella gets along really well with the kids.  So today he spent the morning playing over there and they spent the afternoon playing over here.

At one point all the kids were here having a splash in our blow-up pool, so their mum came over to help me supervise them all because, according to her, "my children are the spawn of the devil".

I don't really know this woman.  We've met two or three times over the past 6 months, but in that moment I felt my heart break for those children, and that family.

Between that conversation and this post I read this morning over at Single Dad Laughing, I realised that the words we use and the attitudes we have toward our children create who they are!

Surely there are going to be enough people in your child's life to tear them down and make them feel worthless that you don't have to be one of them!

Surely, as their parent, you should be their safe haven and the place they come to for consolation and reassurance that they're okay!

Surely.

I get that kids are wearing.

I get that sometimes you get sick of saying the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and you feel like you may as well smack your head into a brick wall

I get that there are some things about your kids, and as they get older their decisions that you're not going to like.

I get that.

But one of our roles as parents is to love our kids and make sure they know it!  They need to know how proud we are of them, how brilliant they are, how creative and interesting and beautiful.  They need to hear from their parents that, no matter what happens, they are acceptable to us!

And they need to hear it in our conversations with other adults.

We parents are very human.  But let's not allow that to be an excuse to break our children.

Let's keep trying to improve our communication with our kids, find out all the wonderful things about their personalities and views of the world that we can be proud of and inspired by.

Because our children, no matter who they are or what they do, are beautiful and inspiring and deserve to be loved.  They are, after all, human just like us.

On to the next stage!

I was rather nervous this morning.  And I didn't really sleep so well last night either.

Why?

Because last night I was cramming.

Yesterday I was called in for two job interviews (at different businesses) today.  So yesterday evening I attempted to get my head into "interview mode" and remember all the great things about me as an employee.  I read a few websites about job interviews and came across those stupid "behavioural" interview questions.

You know the ones!  They normally start something like, "tell me about a situation where you...".

God I hate those!

Ask me any question you like about my skills or approach and I'll come up with a decent answer.  But ask me for specifics and my mind goes completely blank!

I haven't worked full time in over 4 years!!!  And in the meantime, I've had a baby.  Haven't you ever heard of baby brain???  I'm sure it deletes all memory of everything you've ever said or done!

And then there's the "why do you think you're the best person for this position?" question.

So this morning I was nervous.

The first interview turned out to be more like a job description.  She told me about the role, I asked questions, she asked a couple of really easy skill-based questions, and it was over!  She said she'd call in the afternoon and let me know.

The second was an interview at the NAB (National Australia Bank).  I'd done an interview back in March and didn't get the job.  But I was told that I'd interviewed well and they'd like to keep me on their files in case another position came up.

I got a call-back at the end of June, went in for a chat and didn't hear much until mid August, when I was told that they hoped to start training me for a relief position at the start of September.  Nothing happened.

Then yesterday they asked me to come in for another interview today because the relief is in our closest town and the next largest town as well, and the manager there wanted to know more about me and meet me herself.

The first interview in March was the behavioural style of interview.  So you can imagine my complete relief when they said it wouldn't be that style of interview!!!!  Yay!!!!

We had a chat, I answered questions, I asked questions and by the end of it the other manager approved me for the position.  The local manager then told me about the process that happens now and it looks like I'll be training in about three weeks time!

So, I'm going to be a Customer Adviser (that's "teller" to most people) for NAB.

Which means we, as a family, are moving in to a new stage of our lives.  I won't be a 100% stay-at-home mum anymore, which will change the way some things are done.  Add that to the upcoming start of school for the Little Big Fella (in 4 months) and we have another change to our family dynamic!

The Big Fella decided that we needed to celebrate so we went out to lunch at one of the local pubs.  Then we went and bought a new blow-up pool (the old one had a hole in it), came home, mowed and then put the pool up under the shade and had a swim.

I called the other place that I'd interviewed at this morning to tell them I'd accepted another job.  Know what she said?  "I was just about to call you and say you had the job!"

Guess it's just time for me to get back to work ;-)