Starting 2013 with a Bang.......or Pox

I am writing this post 15 hours in to 2013. And am realising that the universe must think I need some lessons.  Two days ago, Cadyn showed me what I thought was a sandfly bite on his chest. Yesterday he asked if it was a pimple on his forehead? And this morning, after lying in bed trying to rationalise why I drank wine AND cider to bring in the new year, I started to do some maths and surprisingly came up with an answer. I dragged my sorry ass upstairs and asked Cadyn to lift his pyjama top up.......and there they were - a lovely little collection of red spots. Bless. My remarkable maths solving did not make my answer any easier to swallow - it was quite clear to me that the little man had chicken pox! 

You see, this is where Murphy's law kicks in......only only New Years Day, only whilst on holidays and only whilst holidaying in a little town 45 minutes from Launceston, Tasmania, would one of my children get chicken pox. And to top it all off - only the child who has actually been vaccinated would get it!

So four hours of today has been spent driving to and from the "city" to try and find a chemist. Not only did we NOT find a chemist, we also did not find much else! Oh, apart from a gaggle of tourists all looking for somewhere to have lunch. And given we'd already dined in their "food hall" yesterday, and dropped a whole days budget doing so, we opted for the ONE bakery cafe we found! Thankfully yummy....

An hour later we arrived back to the house and found four very happy (albeit one a little spotty) kids, watching a movie with their Pop and Shaz. The Calamine lotion I found at Woolworths (who knew?) was swiftly applied amongst cried of "it's cold!", and I was quietly astounded at how quickly those pox spread......

Here in lies my first lesson for 2013 - PATIENCE.  My next task is to try and contain the pox to one child only! The 14 year old had it ten years ago, but the thought of the two girls with a bout of it gives ME hives!

2012 In Review

I'm in the perfect spot right now as I reflect on all that 2012 has dished up. I've just finished my second glass of Sav and eaten copious amounts of Brie, dips and Jatz. And I've just taken myself out to the verandah of our holiday residence here on the northern coast of Tasmania.

So, where do I start? It's past year has given me and my family more financial security than ever.we bought our first home together, which meant we moved. And although the move was physically hard, it was mentally easy and I can honestly say has made for a much healthier family!

My kids have continued to make me proud. I now have an extra man living I the house, as the 14 year old continues to mumble inaudibly and sleeps in (finally!), I look up to him(literally,as he's pipped me I the height stakes) and cannot be more pleased with the person he is growing to be. The other three have com along I leaps and bounds, and although I faced up to the fact that I was not the perfect mother, I know I must've doing something right.

Today, being my 9th wedding anniversary with Andrew is the best day to reaffirm what I knew within weeks of meeting him - he is amazing, and I thank the heavens above for sending me a man who has passion, drive and goals. He also has a huge heart and thinks I'm the best thing since sliced bread....who am I to argue?

We've had family members leave us and others fighting to stay on. Battles that are still not won, but will be give a fair crack!

But the biggest thing that has impacted my life this year and has made all of the previously mentioned things magnified, is witnessing grief and loss in its most devastating form. My beautiful friend lost her soul mate and partner/husband of almost 30 years and her pain has been beyond my imagination. Watching someone you care about go through hell can only be described as incredibly sad. I can't tell you how many times I have told her "it's fucked" because there are literally no other appropriate words to describe it. Through it although, she has showed incredible strength and will,to be there for her amazing children. And reaffirms what I have always known about her, that she is awesome.

Her loss has altered my priorities somewhat. I hug my husband tighter and more often, and whenever things seem really shit and hard to deal with - I think of her.  I also see rainbows differently.....

So all in all, 2012 has served up some crap, with a side serving of goodness. I'm hoping to take the side serve and make it a regular in 2013. I'm starting the year with the most positive outlook I think I have ever had, and hope it will hold me in good stead for all that fabulousness that is yet to come!

And with that my friends, I wish you all a wonderful New Years Eve and better still,a healthy and happy 2013! Thank you all for dropping in and I hope to see you all more in themes year!

xxx

I've got My Ranty Pants on.....Again

So I have my ranty pants on tonight.  Most of my ranting of late is to do with social networking and teenagers.  Basically because I have a teenager and he lives and breaths social networking.  Don't get me wrong - I am quite obviously in to social networking, but the past six months or so have opened my eyes way more than I am comfortable with in regards to the way our teenagers are portraying themselves to the world.

And here are just a couple of examples why.....

I've been banging on to Lochie about being aware of what he is "liking" on FB.  The fact that when I look through my newsfeed I can see that he likes 50 girls status's and/or photos of them leaning forward in to the camera lens with their tongue hanging out the side of their mouths makes me queasy.  Not because he likes that sort of shit - he's a teenage boy with a pulse - but because these girls are putting that crap up there for him and a million other boys and possibly pedophiles to see....

The fact that I can then (if I wanted to) right click on any of said photos and save them to my computer makes me ill.  And I'm a harmless, 37 year old Mother of four.  Who else could save these photos to salivate over???

Then there's the posts he likes from ridiculous FB pages and/or groups.  One of them was beautifully titled "Straya C*nts".  Lovely.  Let's just say I was able to delete this page from his list whilst I still had his password...  I pointed out to my beloved son that not only was I seeing this shit in my newsfeed, so were his grandparents and potentially anyone else who had eyesight.  I am no prude, and have been known to drop the odd "C" bomb, but would not and could not in front of my parents or grandparents.

Last week was the straw that broke the camel's Mummy's sanity!  Now that Instagram is gaining a tight hold on everyone, it seems a young girl whom I'm assuming is probably quite charming, has named herself "Infinity Whore"......and Lochie is "following" her.  There are so many things wrong with this scenario I don't even know where to begin.  The bottom line is this - no 14 year old girl should be naming herself in any way, shape or form a Whore.  Not for amusement, not for popularity and certainly not for anything but degradation.  Unfortunately it took quite a few conversations, raised voices and the reality that he will some day in the near future have two sisters the same age as this girl, to finally get through to him that this was NOT OK.  Oh, and a phone call to his Father threatening not to pay phone bills or give him access to any form of internet and/or phone if he did not use communication tools in a way I find respectable.

  I posted this on his FB page and we spoke about it.  I think I'm on track....

{Source unknown due to random FB post}

To top all of this, last night whilst scrolling through  FB world, I see my darling son has liked a young girl's status about it being nice to know that some people care out there.  For some unknown reason it raised my curiosity, and when I clicked on this girl's page I was horrified.  There were several posts about wanting to kill herself.  About how close she lives to a train line.  And that she had tried to kill herself the previous night.  As I read through it all, I wondered who her parents were?  I wondered who I could contact to let them know their baby was in trouble?  And as I scrolled down this stranger's page, I recognised two other children in her photos.......  They just happen to be a friend's children, and after emailing said friend, I find out this morning that she is the friend's step-daughter.

My friend was very grateful I had emailed her, and during a phone call this morning explained that the young girl had been banned from FB, but had obviously opened up her own account and gone on to block all family members from any access to her page.  What she didn't think about was the ever growing six degrees of separation that FB has helped to create and make public.  Her step-mother now has screen shots of her page so she can somehow deal with the situation at hand.

Now I questioned my actions this morning.  Should I have butted in?  Should I have made contact and let this girl's family know what was going on?  I DID NOT HESITATE.  I would want someone - anyone, to butt in and contact me if God forbid I had no idea.  And as another friend pointed out - I could not live with myself if I hadn't and something happened.

It has also made me wonder how parents are dealing with the 24/7 presence of social media in our children's lives?  Another friend asked me last week how long I thought it would be before Lochie would no longer allow me to be friends with him on FB?  Ummmmmm - how about NEVER?!?!  We have rules in this family - and many relate to his usage of FB.  I believe that having his password for the first couple of years he was on there was the single most smartest thing I could have done.  I picked up so many inappropriate things, but turned them in to lessons for him.  He knows that if he wants to use FB, he needs to follow my wishes of using it respectfully - OR HE WON'T HAVE IT.  As I said to him last week - having his phone, laptop and unlimited access to WiFi is a PRIVILEGE,  NOT A RIGHT.  And I am more than happy to remove his privileges whenever I see fit.....

Sooooo..........how are you dealing with your kids and social media?  Would you alert a parent to a potential issue on their child's page?

Discuss.....

Back to THE Suburb

Last night, we ventured back in to our old suburb.  Apart from getting my hair done, it's the first time I have been back.  We were invited to a get together for Christmas drinks, dinner and swimming.  Perfect.  Only it took me quite a few weeks to decide whether we would be going.  You see, when we moved back in July, we not only moved house, but I moved my head space.  I made a conscious decision to give myself time away from a place that had not only been home for eight years, but had also been very difficult for me to live in for the last two years we were there.

I've written quite a few posts about the shit I went through, but nothing really specific.  I don't find much point in re-hashing past events that I'm "over", but for your sake I'll make it short and sweet.  When Chelsea started Kindergarten, I met a group of really great chicks.  I wasn't really keen on making new friends as I (and this sounds ridiculous) already had enough good friends to get me through.  In fact, I'd only met one of my best friends a couple of years before at playgroup.  Anyway, I embraced these new friendships, and before I knew it, there was a group of us that would sit together at school events, get together on weekends, and go out for dinner on occasion.  Just after I had my hysterectomy, my best friend started distancing herself from me.  And over a month or two, was being so strange around me that I constantly found myself asking her whether I had done something wrong?  After many responses from her that all was well, I was left very confused, but was also very aware that she was spending a whole lot more time with one of the other Mums from school, and to be quite honest - I was hurt.

Eventually I ended up emailing her, and really pressing for a reason as to why things had changed between us?  And that's where it all headed down hill.  Things deteriorated quite quickly and before I knew it I was a bit of an outcast at school and was ignored and shunned by the same people I had become pretty close with.  It devastated me.

Facebook showed me in no uncertain terms that the group were still all friends, and that I had been left out of social gatherings, and my now ex-best friend quite cheerfully changed her profile pics and status updates to include others instead of myself.  Whilst a couple of those women still were polite and cheerful to me in person, my trust was damaged and I had no idea what was being made of me behind my back.   I had become consumed by the events, and was not coping - I'm not ashamed to say that I ended up in counselling.

Thankfully I have an amazing husband, whom at the time told me in no uncertain terms that this group of women would all eventually combust, and turn against one another.  True to his word, this exact thing happened, and some of those same women were left feeling exactly how I had felt.

Throughout this whole shitty ordeal, came a few wonderful things.  I met some other amazing Mums at the school.  And some I already knew became closer to me, and helped lift me out of the crappy situation I was in.

So my mental health was of utmost importance when we moved.  I needed to literally get a whole suburb out of my head.  I needed to re-centre my trust and figure out who it was I wanted to keep in touch with.  Five months later, and a cuppa with a friend early this week ended my break up with suburbia, and helped me to realise that I was now over it.

Fast forward to last night, and a lovely evening spent with some of those same Mums, talking over drinks and screaming kids in the swimming pool.  There wasn't much talk about the past, I'd spoken to each of the women there already, and had buried the hatchet.  It takes a big person to apologise for past mistakes and an even bigger person to let it go.  So yep - I'm calling myself a bigger person!

Anyway, this bigger person has had a fabulous day at work and has just popped the kids in to bed.  Andrew is comfortably planted on the lounge with PS3 controls firmly in hand and I'm wondering how we are going to manage hiding a bike in the shed for 24 hours without the kids sniffing it out?  So with my mental health back at it's best - I will now go and plant my own arse on a different lounge and think of some more reminiscing to share with you before this year is over!

Have you ever felt a time or place has sucked the life out of you?  Do you ever want to throw a video game station out a very high window??  

Gratitude

Thirty-one years ago, I changed schools.  I was only one term in to grade one at Merrimac Primary School when we up and moved to a more country-ish town called Coomera.  Back in 1981, Coomera didn't have much.  There was a milk bar at the caravan park on the corner of the highway, a police station and a small grocery store (well there was probably more, but as a six year old those were the most important!).  My parents built a huge 52 square home on seven and a half acres.  We had dams, stables with horses, chickens galore and an aviary with all varieties of feathered friends.  There was a slow moving little creek that ran through the property and up until our pool was built I have memories of jumping in the creek or being dragged around the dam.  I won't go in to the time that dragging ended up with me being taken to hospital for my first set of stitches - let's just say that dams also have rocks and reeds growing under the water!

The local primary school was quite some kilometres away.  Over the other side of the highway, where not long after we moved, Dreamworld opened right across the road from said school.  My Mum would get a job there in the early 80's, along with lots of my friend's Mums, and some afternoons after school, we would wander across and dump our bags, and go through the back gate to spend a couple of hours on rides and water slides.  Yeh.....life was pretty tough.

Kids would come from miles away to this school.  Literally.  We would be picked up by the bus, mostly outside our own house - because neighbours were so far apart!  And we would all congregate at this same school.  It was here that I met the majority of my closest friends - even now, after all these years.

I wasn't what I would call a popular kid.  But I also wasn't not popular.  If you get what I mean?  My entire school life was spent bouncing from one friend to the next, one group to another.  And without sounding up myself, I think I was a pretty well liked kid.  I don't recall being teased (well, until high school when some smart ass boy asked me if I'd been sunbaking under a flyscreen?) or pushed around, I just went to school, learnt and had fun.

The reason I'm sharing all of this with you today?  Well, last Tuesday I decided I needed to send my Dad a hamper for Christmas.  You see, his Doctors have given him the "thumbs down" to travel to Melbourne for the festive season.  His health has been shocking since his little heart episode.  In fact, I'd been holding my breath until Thursday just gone, when what I think was a bone marrow biopsy (I say think because my dear old 69 year old Dad cannot for the life of him give me the proper names for all the tests he's been going through!) came back with nothing!  Hoorah!  I'd spent ten days freaking out because his doctors thought he may have bone cancer.  Now, it's just waiting on further results for his heart, kidneys etc etc.

Anyway, back to the hamper.......  I went online and was quite frustrated by the options laid out before me.  $70 for a crappy little hamper with crackers, red wine and other bullshit added in.  No good for my Dad who doesn't drink red wine, is not a fan of crackers and doesn't stand for bullshit.  So I headed over to the old faithful Facebook and popped up a status to all my Gold Coast friends, wondering who lived close to my Dad?  A couple of girls I went through school with popped up and a certain lovely lady only lived ten minutes away and was more than happy to put a hamper together for me AND drop it off to my Dad!  I was thrilled!

I messaged her a list of possible items - XXXX beer, Violet Crumble, fruit mince pies and a little pudding.  And lots of fresh fruit.  This wonderful human being went above and beyond for me, and blew me away with the end result.  She delivered it to my Dad yesterday.  Now, she had not seen my Dad for probably 25+ years, so to go to a near stranger's home and deliver a gift with personal touches is a big ask!  But she did it.  And she gave my Dad a hug and a kiss from me too.  AND sms'd a photo for me too!  Dad was surprised.  She said he was speechless.  Well, until he figured he had some company and wanted to have a chat.....

Dad with his loot!

I'm sharing this because I want to remind everyone that the Christmas spirit is in fact well and truly alive and kicking.  When I posted the photo on FB yesterday afternoon and did a public thank you to my friend, everyone I grew up with was chuffed.  Another of my life long friends messaged me and I sat in tears with gratitude for the friendships that were formed such a long time ago.  I don't know what was in the water in those little towns in the 1980's, but whatever it was - it helped form a great bunch of children, who have grown in to a wonderful group of adults who are just plain AWESOME!

And just keep this in mind, next time you're travelling down that huge and busy Pacific Motorway on the Gold Coast - Just when you're passing the McDonald's and big stores that line those towns, think of the hundreds of country kids who kicked around in the dirt and had no idea what a Maccas was.  Imagine us crossing the two lane highway to get to our school bus.  And try to picture a much simpler time.  Because that was my childhood.  Well, part of it anyway.....

Chevron Love

When I first spotted chevron patterns I fell in love.  I bought yards and yards of rainbow chevron, I have a yard of navy blue and white hidden away, and when I put a bundle of fabric together for Cadyn's quilt, I knew I wanted some chevrons in there too.  I had no plans to make them a "feature" of his quilt, but I guess it just organically went that way!  I finished this baby last Saturday, and have been holding off showing the final results until today, which has been very difficult!  To say I am thrilled with the end result would be a huge understatement.  I don't think I have ever been so satisfied from a project - ever. 

So, here it is, my Chevron Love quilt!

This quilt has given me a new love also - for my walking foot.  For those non-sewers out there, a walking foot would have to be a quilter's best friend?  The fact that I could quilt this together with no trouble at al, no shifting of layers is a sheer miracle!  Sewing will never be the same....

The best part about this quilt?  My eight year old, hard-to-please son LOVES it!  I was trying desperately not to show it to him until Christmas, but Melbourne's weather stepped in and got all Darwin on us.  So I could not sew for a few days and when the temperature finally dropped it was a Saturday, and he was home.  But he kept me enthused with his passing comments in between cricket commentary.....bless.

I also finished a bunch of other goodies this week, and LITERALLY have NOTHING left to sew for 2012!  Oh, except for Chloe's dress that has been on my sewing room floor for about two months......must get on to that.

I'm linking up with Thank Goodness it's Finished Friday!  What have you finished this week?

Things To Do List - The Christmas Edition

I was at work today with a great chick, and we were both lamenting over the fact that we had no idea what we would be serving Christmas Day.  She hadn't started her Christmas shopping and we were wondering how on earth we would pull it all together?  And just to drain me even further, my Zen keeps getting misplaced stolen.  So, here is my to do list.....

1. Finish sewing the gifts that are half done on my sewing table.

2. Bake the Christmas cake.  The same one I made at work today without the aid of a beater.  I now have guns to rival He-man.

3. Do grocery shopping.

4. Write a list of what to get when grocery shopping.

5. Write the list BEFORE I go grocery shopping.

6. After said grocery shopping, change my mind about what we're eating Christmas Day and start all over again.

7. Investigate the option of ordering and picking up roast chickens on Christmas Day.  (Is this really an option!?!!?!?)

8. Call Family Assistance and see whether they have re-instated my child care rebate, which will in fact then put my debt to creche off the list.

9. Go to the city tomorrow morning to enjoy the spectacle of Christmas festivities with my littlest one.

10.  Figure out how we will fit 15 people at our table for Christmas lunch.

11. Find the KK gift I bought for my work Christmas dinner tomorrow night!

12. Take presents from hiding spot Christmas Eve only to find that one child has 80 presents and the others have five.....

13. Wrap presents.

14. Stop allowing people to steal my Zen!

15. Breath and enjoy myself....

Ten more sleeps til our Tassie break.  Not that I'm counting.

Are you making a list or just winging it???