ON BEING SINGLE…

Well, last Friday was a fairly momentous occasion for me.  My Virtual Assistant Business turned one! 

This time last year I was very excited to set myself up in business, doing secretarial work from home.   It was an answer to prayer – a chance for me to work and earn income, but still be available for my kids.

It’s been a pretty steep learning curve for me.  I’ve been really busy this past six months, and I think I need to do a bit of work on separating work and home life.  I haven’t done it particularly well and there is a definite need for some improvement.  When the kids tell you “you’re always on the computer”, that’s a bit of a concern.  I’m not “always” – but to them it seems that way.  The past few months I’ve been careful to try and keep my Sunday’s free, just to have fun with the kids on my weekend day with them.  If I do have work to do, I do it in the evening once everyone is in bed.

I really love what I do …. I enjoy helping my regular clients and they almost feel like family to me.  I’ve been very blessed with the amount of work I’ve had.  I’ve especially loved having some work at the school where the kids attend.

I am tired though at the moment.  Working the extra 2 days at school for the past 5 weeks has really taken it out of me.  I am looking forward to the school holidays.  Next week I have to work Monday and G will have the kids for the day.  The rest of the week we plan to SLEEP IN (every day!), catch up with friends, maybe do a project here and there, go to the Library, do some baking … just chill out and enjoy being together.  Then the following week I’m going to Perth on my own – the kids will have the week with G and I’m going to visit my bro & sis-in-law and just have some relaxation time.  I can’t wait!  My niece and I always like to go op-shopping and we might get to a movie. Later in the week the kids and G will come down and we’re to catch up with his cousin & family visiting from NZ, so that will be fun.

I’m looking forward to a good rest and recharging my batteries, then we’ll be back home again to start Term 3.  Crikey – we’re half way through the year.  Have you started your Christmas shopping yet?!!! 

On that cheery note, I’ll bid you adieu.

TTFN,

F x

p.s.  I had a sense of teenage-dom this aftternoon with Angus and two school mates “having band practice” in our games room.  The Music Teacher has arranged for each class to put on a concert for Parents this week.  George’s was yesterday and tomorrow we get to see Angus.  He’s joined with 3 classmates and they’ve written a song which they will perform – Angus is playing drums, another boy on acoustic guitar, and two vocalists.  I can’t wait to see how they go.  Just listening to them having fun and “jamming” gave me a glimpse of the teenage future – which isn’t too far away!  Yikes.

My lovely friend “H” (and no, she doesn’t live at Sesame Street!) asked about the name of the tonic I mentioned in my post yesterday.

I had to go back to Dad (via email) to ask the name of it again, as it had completely left my head.

It is Sambucus (elder or elderberry) – see Wikipidea description here.  Mum and Dad said it was really great at clearing up their recent bugs – so if my cough persists I’ll be trotting down to the local Health Food Shop to buy some.

TTFN,

F x

Well, y’all remember Roxy came to live with us earlier this year?  In the past couple of weeks she’s moved house, and is now doggy-friend to Buster – he was in need of company – and I was in need of sanity – so it all worked out well really! 

Roxy was a very cute little dog, but man was she FULL on.   I thought I was getting this cute, placid little lap dog – instead we got a hyped up little minx who was even too much for the kids (now THAT’s saying something!).

I had a gate installed in our backyard so we could move the rabbit and guinea pigs to an area where they wouldn’t be constantly terrorised, but then the kids became almost too afraid to enter the backyard for fear of Roxy.  Plus they couldn’t enjoy their other pets because she made such an awful fuss, even if the kids were trying to carry them inside.

So, long story short – she had to go.  And luckily (for me!) a friend mentioned that they were looking for a companion dog for their dog, and she said “a dog like Roxy would be great”, so I said “Do you want Roxy?” and the rest is history….  I love a happy ending, don’t you? 

So now we are back to being a 1 giant rabbit, 4 guinea pig, 2 mice and 1, oh hang on, make that 2 cat family.  We are cat sitting at the moment.  This is Princess and she is the loveliest little lady:-

Her favourite thing is to sit on the kitchen bench and watch the mice in their cage!

And scenes like these have returned to our house….

W-H-A-T?  People at your house don’t sport guinea pig hats?  Don’t you know they’re the latest style?!

Do you remember the guinea pig babies we had last year?  Well they’re all grown up now.

This is fat-cheeks (can’t think WHY they called her that??!!)

and this is Sparkles … sometimes also known as Sparkle Bear:-

Right before she peed on the sofa!  Ahhhh, isn’t it nice when things get back to normal! 

We watched the Bedtime Stories movie together this afternoon and really enjoyed it.  Of course the kids loved Bugsy the guinea pig.  Our male gp Patch is going to have a holiday with some girls soon.  We might ask for a baby from the litter if they have a grey and white girl.  George said this guinea pig can be mine (wooo hooo) and that perhaps I should call it Bugsy like the one in the movie.  I’m thinking about it.

I hope you’ve had a great weekend?  I’m still trying to fight off flu bugs, not very successfully I’m afraid.  I spoke to Mum and Dad this arvo and they’ve suggested some health tonic thing so I’ll go and have a look into that – if I can remember the name of it that is!

Thanks for stopping by….

F x

The other week I signed up to do an Everyday Life Class with Jen Hall. I like scrapbooking.  I never have TIME to scrapbook but I love doing it! 

Jen is a pretty amazing lady.  She does these Journals for her 4 daughters – which are everyday moments put into journals (or similar) – very casual, rough and ready in a way, but capturing everyday life so well.

I’m a “plain” scrapbooker – I just get the photos on the page, nothing fancy, and certainly not beautiful works of art like my friend Donna creates. 

In amongst all the computer angst with my laptop dying, I lost the password to the course – but Jen emailed it to me today so I could catch up on all I had missed out on.

In Jen’s class she started talking about the 365 Project by Becky Higgins, so I started looking for a bit more info on it.  It sounds right up my alley … easy scrapbooking which won’t take forever, but WILL get the memories into a book and preserved for the kids in the future.

You can read about it here , see what’s in the kit by watching Becky here, and you can get free downloads for the project here (because the kits sold out in record time which left a lot of unhappy campers in the US and around the world!).

It seems so simple, and achievable – especially for someone like me who is time-poor but wants to record  family memories.

So I’ve just spent time online ordering some supplies to start my own “Year Book”.  Once everything arrives and I make a start, I’ll take some pics to show you what I’m up to.

I’m full of a flu bug at the moment, sore head, croaky voice, occasional cough.    I don’t have time to be sick though as I’m proof reading High School Reports all week.  The Head of Primary at School very kindly dosed me up with jaffas today though, so that kept me going.

I hope you’re having a good week?  I’ll try to pop back later in the week with the Roxy update.  Sounds like a spy mission doesn’t it?

F x

It’s 11pm, I’ve just finished some legal transcription and SHOULD be in bed – but I couldn’t resist a little blog post before I go.

I just bought this (and I hope she’ll forgive me for ‘borrowing’ the pic off her blog!)

My VERY talented friend Donna (you know, the one who always tells me that EVERYONE can be an artist – love ya Don!) has been painting since November last year.  I’ve been wanting to buy one of her pieces for ages but none of them seemed quite right for me.  However, the other weekend she had a bit of a painting frenzy – and this gorgeous creature was the result.  The words by the flower say “collect happy moments” and that’s right about where I’m at these days.  I can’t wait to get her and hang her on my wall (have to pay for her first – I’ll be over soon!).  You can check out what Donna is working on at the moment on her *heart* life blog.  She’s really finding her own unique style – and I think the faces she paints are just exquisite.

I also had another little splurge and bought myself one of these… Locket Sets which use the art of this amazing lady Diane Duda, check out her Duda Daze blog.  I really love the “believe” locket, but also like the little girls and I’ll be wearing this heaps.  Sometimes it’s nice just to treat yourself ‘because’!    Aren’t there some seriously talented people about?  p.s.  The locket is made out of recycled car bits – how cool is that?!

I hope you’re having a good week?  I had a lovely peaceful day today at home – I did THREE loads of washing which all got hung out and dried AND brought back in – all in the same day (that’s a real achievement for me lately – sad, but true).  The kids and I also went to rescue a dog and cat from a friend’s house.  Long story short but this friend’s husband had a stroke on the weekend and they had to rush down to Perth – and the poor animals got left inside for a few days.  I had hoped to find a neighbour to look after them – but I couldn’t get an answer from door knocking – so today we decided we’d just bring them home.  The cat is absolutely gorgeous – kind of a grey and cream tabby-ish cat.  It happily sat in the car with George while we drove home.  Our own cat, Winnie, would have seriously maimed and hurt bystanders if we tried that with her.  The dog is a Jack Russell cross and she’s very sweet too.  So the pet count is up – except Roxy went to a new home at the weekend… I’ll save that for another post.  Better go to bed!

TTFN,

Fx

I’m just home from my Divorce Care Course.  Regular readers of my blog will know that I started going to Divorce Care earlier this year.  I started at Week 3 of the 13 Week Course – and we’ve gone full circle and tonight I finished with Week 2.  It’s been an amazing journey – and the Course came at the perfect time for me (well actually I know God played a part in me starting the Course exactly when I did!).

I’ve learnt heaps, I’ve made some new friends, and I know that I’m walking the path to healing and recovery from the pain of separation.

Tonight we were talking about grief and how the end of a marriage is actually a tearing apart of your souls.  Ouch – “tearing” – that’s a rather nasty sounding word isn’t it?  And it’s truly what it’s like.  In my case I had spent nearly 19 years with this man who I thought was my “one and only” – the person I would grow old with, enjoy grandkids with, travel the world with … but sadly it’s not to be.  You have to let go of everything that you thought you had and start afresh – trying to rebuild something new from the ashes of the past.

One of the Course Leaders asked me tonight if I still had grieving to do and I answered with a very definite YES, and to be honest I’m not sure that I’ll ever fully get over it.  It’s always going to be there … for years to come … watching our children grow into adulthood, celebrating 18th/21st birthdays, seeing them become engaged, get married, have babies … all of those events will be painful in their own way – seeing each other together as a family, and yet not together.  No doubt we will move on and perhaps get re-married.  G is already re-partnered and I’m coming to terms with that.  For myself I’m in no rush to find somebody else.  I’m enjoying this time of single-ness and just enjoying being “me”. 

I was thinking that I would give Divorce Care up and just try and go once a month, but I’m going to ask G to consider changing the nights we have the children so I can keep going.  I feel like it’s really helping me deal with a lot of “stuff” and it’s so nice to be amongst a group of people who “get” where you are at and how you feel.

Being single is quite lonely in a lot of ways – and I don’t just mean as in being “alone”.  You somehow don’t fit like you did before when you were “a couple”.  That’s all part of the adjustment too.

Anyway … sorry if this sounds melancholy.  It’s not meant to.  I’m moving forward and getting on with my life.  I am so blessed with 3 awesome kids, heaps of work, and a faith which sustains me in these (sometimes) trying times.

Divorce Care is wonderful.  If you know friends or people who are struggling after separation – encourage them to see if this Course runs near them.  It’s been just fantastic for me.

I hope you’re having a great week.  A parcel arrived from Grandma today for Miss Boo which I think contains the repaired dress (I found the parcel on the doorstep after the kids had already gone to their Dad’s – so I can’t wait to see her face when she opens it up tomorrow).  Thanks Grandma for doing the fix-it job.  You’re the best!

AND I’m getting a new, you-beaut computer tomorrow.  Did I tell you my laptop died?  Sadly it seems that the hard drive has failed – after 6 months!    Not happy Jan!!

Anyway, I have a friend who runs his own computer business so I’ve decided to buy a new computer tower and go back to having a desktop.  I can’t afford the hassle of a laptop breaking down on me frequently (it will be fixed for nix under warranty) but I’ll go back to a standard desktop and still have the laptop when I go away or if I need to work for a client offsite… the joys of technology eh?!  One thing I’ll say is that I’m glad I got an off-site back up system.  I use Jungle Disk and I’ve been able to use the kids computer and get any work files I need as easy as pie off the web.  Very handy indeed.  Only bummer for me was that I hadn’t backed up my photos (WHAT WAS I THINKING??!!) but computer friend to the rescue who copied the hard-drive for me before it gets replaced so all is not lost.  Phew!  Needless to say I’ll be organising a separate hard-drive for backing up my photos (they take forever if I want to do it through Jungle Disk).

Well thanks for stopping by and reading my rambles….

F x

I received the prizes I won from the Ordinary Courage blog a few weeks back.

This print from Bone Sigh Arts and this CD from Jen Lee. Included with the CD from Jen Lee was this bookmark, which read:-

Don’t write

It’s too powerful.

It might tell someone how

you feel.  How you hurt.

What you don’t understand.

Don’t write.

It’s too powerful.

It will show who you are

on the inside to the outside.

It’ll blow your cover,

your nice reputation.

Don’t write.

It’s too powerful.

It might give others hope.

Let them know

they’re not alone.

It might change minds.

Change directions.

Change the world.

So, whatever you do,

don’t write.

jenlee.net

That really spoke to me.  I’ve always enjoyed writing … always.  As a child I LOVED writing stories.  I still have an exercise book (covered in wallpaper – it was the 70’s – what can I say!) with stories I wrote at School.  I remember friends used to struggle to come up with a page – but I would write page, after page, after page.  I wanted to be a Journalist for a long time, but instead I grew up to be a Secretary (and I love what I do). 

But that quote on the bookmark really made me think about writing and what it is, why we do it, how we do it.

I started this Blog because I was hurting, and I thought perhaps by sharing my thoughts and feelings that I might help somebody else who was going through similar things.

Lately I stopped sharing personal things because I wondered whether I was crossing some sort of invisible boundary that says “it’s too much – you’re giving away too much – nobody cares to read it anyway”.  But do you know what?  I don’t care if nobody reads it really – because it’s just a chance for me to talk about my life and my experiences and I can only be honest and open and myself.

So I mentioned the other day that this last week has been hard.  I am facing the consequences of having a broken marriage.  I had to watch my eldest child sob and cry and say “I just want things to go back to normal” and with all of my heart I wished to could say the words that he longed to hear “it will”.  But it won’t, and it sucks, and it’s not fair – and I’d just like to stamp my feet – or drop off the face of the Earth to avoid the pain and the agony – and mostly not to have to see my kids struggling to deal with the failure of their parents ~ who couldn’t make things work.

I can tell everybody “we have a GREAT separation” (and we do) or “it’s very amicable and okay for the kids” (and it is) BUT it’s still ultimately not what you wish or hope for, and your kids don’t have a say in how their lives have been turned upside down or how things change for them.

Divorce/separation is SUCH a hard process to get through.  You have good days/weeks and you have really sucky/hard/awful/horrible weeks where you honestly don’t see the point of going on – what’s the point – what’s it all about!

BUT you also have kids, and a responsibility to them – to make life as good as it can be given the circumstances you find yourself in.  They are THE light in my life, and the JOY in my life – and I owe it to them to be a great Mum and to be friends with their Dad and to MAKE it work out.

Gotta dash.

Might write more later….

Thanks for stopping by.

Fx

Greetings all.

I thought I might share a little bit of local history with you.  Tomorrow it’s 380 years since the ship Batavia sank at the Abrolhos Islands.

From the WA Museum website:-

On the morning of 4 June 1629, the VOC ship Batavia was wrecked on Morning Reef in the Houtman Abrolhos, off the coast of Western Australia. The shipwreck was a prelude to an extraordinary tragedy. Commander Francisco Pelsaert, all the senior officers, some crew and passengers, 48 in all, deserted 268 people, on the wreck and on two waterless islands, whilst they went in search of water. Abandoning the search on the mainland coast, they made their way to Batavia (modern Jakarta), to obtain help; the journey took 33 days. On arrival, the high boatswain was executed, on Pelsaert’s indictment, for outrageous behaviour before the loss of the ship. Skipper Adrien Jacobsz was arrested for negligence. The Governor General dispatched Pelsaert in the jacht Sardam to rescue the survivors. With extraordinary bad luck, it took 63 days to find the wreck site, almost double the time it took the party to get to Batavia. At the Abrolhos, Pelsaert discovered that mutiny had taken place. A small group of mutineers had massacred 125 men, women and children. Pelsaert arrested the mutineers and executed some of them.

What amazing history right on our doorstep, almost.  A lot of Australian’s don’t even know that it was the Dutch who originally discovered Australia, not Captain Cook!  I did Australian History with the boys last year, when we were homeschooling, using Australia, the Wide Brown Land for Me, an excellent book available from Adnil Press.  I think I had as much fun as the boys learning about Australia and it’s early history.  We made damper, and the lads re-inacted the Ned Kelly gang.  Great fun!

Sigh!  I look back at photos like those and I MISS homeschooling (sob!).

Anyway… back to tomorrow – our local Museum are having a few different events over this next week to commemorate the Anniversary.  Sailing in the long boat replica would be a pretty amazing experience.  Just imagine how it was for those who survived the ship wreck, then surviving the mutiny as well!

We have a great display about the Batavia at our local museum.  The picture in the “events” link (I have above) is of the portico made of sandstone blocks which were used as ballast in the bottom of the ship.  You can read more about that in the WA museum link above as well.

I love history – especially when it relates to where you live.

Hope you’re having a great week?  Mine is busy (what’s new) and the last week has been a bit of an emotional roller coaster, but I’ll save that for another post (maybe!).

Thanks for stopping by….

F x