Lounge renovations...... part 2

My new study.... omg I am so excited about this Ikea trip.

View from the entry/dining room into the lounge room

Renovation of the lounge/study...some before shots

And so after two years at our current house, we have finally started some work inside the house.  well that's not fair really as we did do our bedroom last year... did I blog that? Probably not... hmm will do some before and after shots of that next time.... Okay... so I will also try to figure out how to post photos from the design software thing I've used ... but for now let me explain.  Our current lounge room used to be the garage.  So for 2 years we've lounged in a room with a pole down the centre, my desk in the room, the kids' desk in the room with their computers, the piano, the tv and the couch.  An incredibly eclectic room with no space from each other should someone want to play computer and someone else want to watch tv in peace.  However, the central pole can't be moved.... you know, or the house might fall down.  So Dave hit on the idea of building a wall where the post is and turning the entire side of that room into my study/music room/kids study (until they are old enough to study in their rooms).   The in order to open up the what will be halved lounge room, we are knocking down the wall between the dining and lounge and leaving a half height wall (we have to have a half height wall as there still needs to be a column there - again, supporting walls!!).  So here are some shots just as we've moved the furniture out of the way... then some shots of the ceiling and some of the wall demolished today... more to come :)

 so see the pole below.... imagine that there will now be a wall running through that from left to right and this side of the wall will be the study and the other side of the wall will be the lounge... and you'll be able to see over the top of what will be a half height wall over where those clothes are hanging and the dining room is on the other side... got it??

and the view from the dining room towards the wall that divides the dining from the lounge room (those are our double front doors that will be going... and a new entry will reign supreme!!!

so this here below is the wall that will become half height

very excited... stay tuned for the next installment :)

Little Susie Homemaker

Hello Dear Readers,
I think today I came as close as I'll ever come to being the perfect housewife ;)
Up early tending to my children, I had them dressed, fed and ready for school about 2 hours before we had to be there (that was a mistake in hindsight that I will not make again lol)... and after dropping my eldest at Prep I returned with my littlie and set her up for a morning of painting while I conducted my exercises (you know, to get myself taut and terrific for my husband as every good wife should). I morning-tea-ed my daughter and I and then embarked on preparing dinner - chicken, bacon and mushroom vol-au-vents. Dinner in the fridge ready to be baked as soon as my husband wanted dinner (haha), I managed to get my daughter to agree to a rest while I folded the washing that had been drying all morning (admittedly I watched telly as I did this rather than multi-tasking some other domestic chore). Nap-time over and washing folded and put away, we played for a little while before picking Charli up from school and then Dave up from the train station. We returned home at which point I sat and did craft at the table with the girls (and in the process did up a reward chart for our youngest to aide with bedtime and feeding issues). I then served an early dinner so that I could primp and preen and get the children ready for bed - and get to a prep meeting at the school. I returned to make lunches, pour a glass of wine and iron some shirts for my husband who just received a promotion today.... I didn't follow him to bed to perform my wifely duties so i guess I failed there - but up until that point I was pretty 'perfect' wouldn't you say lol.... enjoy it Dave, it probably won't happen again ;)

My life in houses...

I borrowed this idea from Edwina and I must say I love the idea. it's my life in houses.... all the places that I've lived since I was born.



Age: Birth - 2 years
Info: This was my aunt's house and the house that my mum and I lived in until I was about 2 years old - at which time she finally became eligible for a Queensland Housing Commission home in Stafford... and it was time to go out on our own :)

__________________________________________________________

Age: 2 years - 20 years (1976-1994)
Info: This is the house of my childhood. Most of my childhood memories centre around this house and when I think of happy times with my mum, this is the home I picture her in. It may not have been our house but she made it my home growing up - and a happy childhood it was.

________________________________________________________________

Age: 20 years-23 years (1994 - 1997)
Info: This is the first home my mum ever owned and for that reason it will always be special to me because it was so very special to her. Unfortunately this home still holds many memories of my mum's illness and death for me... the months of caring for her, visiting her, fighting with her..... maybe I'll work through these one day. I hope so.
However, due to the financial crisis of 2008 and our desire to upgrade our family home, we had to sell this home.

____________________________________________________

Age: 23 (Aug 1997- Jan 1998)
Info: I moved out with my then current boyfriend's best friend Nick into my first share house. we had lots of fun times here. Good memories of this house ... but they were short lived as our lease was not renewed after 6 months as the owner's daughter wanted to move in.. yeah thanks for that.... so Nick and I moved on.
Interesting fact: This house turned out to be owned by one of Dave's friend's dad - so that he'd already been to parties in this house before I had!!!

_____________________________________________

Age: 23-25 (Jan 1998 - Oct 1999)
Interesting fact: This house was haunted - a fact that Sueann and I thought was great (Sueann moved in with us after a few months) but a fact that TOTALLY freaked Nick out - girly wuss ;)
I moved out of this house when after numerous housemate changes due to work changes and engagements etc etc, the housemate situation went stale for me and Dave and Geoff kindly offered to take me into their home until I got back from Africa and could look for somewhere new ......

____________________________________

Age: 25-33 (1999-2008)
Info: This house was where Dave was living with his Nan until she had a stroke and had to go and live with his folks. Then Geoff moved in to share the house and then I came along to camp out here until I went to Africa (the plan being to look for somewhere new to live when I got back). That didn't go to plan however when Dave and I went from housemates to soulmates and started actually living together. In 2001, we bought the place from his Nan and we owned our first home together.

Interesting fact: After we had the girls we realised that they were the fifth generation of Rogers to live in the house given that his great-Nan had lived there for some time before she died.

______________________________________________________

Age: 33-34 (Jan 2008 - Dec 2008)

Info: At the end of 2007 I could stand the size of our beloved Mitchy home no longer - it was two small for a family of four in this day and age (his grandparents did it no problems but then they didn't have 3 computers, a printer, scanner, server, media centre etc etc etc to house) !!
We had to-ed and fro-ed forever re: do we renovate, knock down and rebuild or just move.... so rather than make a quick decision we moved into the above house - kindly rented to us by friends who were moving to Vic - until we could decide what to do about our living situation.

___________________________________________________

Age: 34 - onwards (2008 - ???)

Info: After spending a very tumultuous 2008 at our Kedron home the decision was made not to renovate our Mitchy home or knock down and rebuild due to the anticipated stress!!! So while I was off work i started trawling the Real Estate sites for our new home - criteria? LOTS OF SPACE.... and I found it. Of course lots of space often translates into "ugly 70's brick monstrosity" but we decided (after much prompting by Dave to convince me ugly was fixable) to buy the big house and be able to make those lovely aesthetic changes at our own pace while still having enough space that I wouldn't feel the need to kill anyone for some room :)
It's been a great first year here (it will be our first anniversary in about 12 days) - and I'm enjoying the 'renovating at our own pace because nothing is desperately in need of doing'..... updated pics of before and after shots of various spaces in the house to follow soon......

And there you have my life in houses dear readers .... care to share yours?

The attempt to make my house look like something out of House and Garden... sort of

The new table:






Note the lovely suede chairs - the plastic that comes over them when they are delivered.... it's not coming off for another 18 years or so ;)

And here is a photo of our sideboard, complete with lavender infused decorations straight from the tree and shells from the beach - my attempt at H&G type decorating :)

Day 1 Landscaping....The Tree is Felled (don't worry more will be planted in it's place!!)

A Life Update

Well hello dear readers. 'tis been awhile. Again, not due to lack of content but rather lack of motivation to get to the computer and write it all down. I think I've mentioned before that if they could hurry up and invent a mind to computer recorder I would blog a lot more often. Then at 3am while I was narrating a blog entry in my head (yes I do actually do that...how sad is that) - it would be automatically blogging to my site. How cool would that be!!??

And so begins a life update:

My Health

Is doing quite well thank you. I can't wait to see the specialist in a few weeks to get my meds reviewed though - there've been a few blackouts of late when I've stood up too suddenly and I've fainted momentarily because my blood pressure must just drop... of course, they may not change my medication at all....after all, keeping my BP low is the point I think. Anyway, I'm braving work one day a week as of the first of December (always good to return to work during the silly season don't you think??) so we'll see how that goes.

My Princesses

I never feel like I can do justice to this section of my blog. So much happens during the day with them both that it's hard to capture their hilarity, their drama, their ability to stun me with their personalities..... so some snippets.

******

(note well: we've been quite aware of charli's fascination with death and dying lately - a stage I'm told - but all the more because of my cardiac arrest.... )

So Dave and I are sitting in her room playing trains. She lays two of the wooden people on the floor and says "they died". Dave and I look at each other in horror. Maybe they are just sleeping charli? "No they died-ed". Then she looks sad, hangs her head and pouts her lips. "What's up Charli?"
"I'm just so sad that they died"
"Charli, it's okay - they didn't really die, let's not play this game ok?"
Charli looks up with a big grin on her face:
"It's okay mummy, I'm not sad, I'm just pretending - they're not really dead you know, they're just toys".
Blimey.....I can't keep up with her.

******

Me: Zie, don't bite Charli - it's very naughty!
Zie: No
Me: Zie, that's it, you need to move away from Charli please, you're being very naughty
Zie: Runs across the room, slaps me in the face or sometimes bites me if she's in the mood and then runs from the room into her room and sits in time out before I can even put her there. (sigh) - love how she gets one last naughty moment in before punishing herself.

*******

Charli on one of our many house-hunting trips of late. Walks in the door at a house - walks up to the agent and says "My name is Charlotte, I hope you're having a good day, we're going to buy this house ok?"..... every real estate agents' dream sale.

*******

I promise I'm going to do more of these snippet blogs. there's a 1000 more tales on a daily basis. I'll be more diligent I promise...

The House Hunting

Let's see if I can condense this.

• We've been househunting a lot
• It hasn't been easy because even though I have all this time on my hands, I can't drive so I can't be doing any of it during the week - which means every Saturday we get to cart the kids around and listen to them whinge and whine the whole time. It's lots of fun
• We found a house they were listing as Gigantor!! It's ugly but it's huge. Here's a couple of pics:

It's on nearly 1200 square metres of sloping to flat land, there's odd structural issues like a pole in the centre of the lounge room (because it used to be the garage), there's shag pile carpets which HAVE to go and it's tiled floors instead of my preferred wood. There's no flow effect out to the entertaining areas and all in all it's a brick piece of lego that desperately needs to be prettied up. But having looked at a few houses now (to say the least), we've discovered if you buy a pretty house, then you're paying for someone else's hard work and the chances are it's either a) too expensive, b) too small or c) on a small lot which we've decided we don't want. *sigh*

• We offered 34K less than their asking price - a rude offer yes but one that sat well with us given what we wanted to do with the place. And the Brisbane market is falling so.....
• they said 'no' and didn't counter-offer
• we offered 9K more and said that was our limit (and meant it)
• They came back with an offer 12K more than that. I said no our offer was X and that's all we can offer. Goodbye
• Felt emotionally drained as yet another house passed us by but refused to wallow. This house hunting thing is a big game and there's no point getting stressed about it (or giving yourself a cardiac arrest ;)
• Yesterday (after a tiresome Hi-5 concert!!), we went to see another house at the same price as we were offering on the above house - prettier, all renovated, pool, same size block, good high fences to contain the children BUT we just didn't like it. Might have been prettier but it was smaller and still had lots of little structural things that you knew were going to cost money to re-do. AND there was moisture in the garage wall..... and above the garage on the lawn sat the pool..... we were suspicious!!
• Driving home we decided that for the extra 12K we may as well bow to the wishes of the vendors who own the home above and just buy it. It always helps to see comparably priced houses on the market so we planned to call on the way home and bow to their new asking price.
• The phone was in the back of the car and i couldn't reach it so planned to call when we got home.
• The phone rang and went thorugh to message bank.
• Turns out that it was the estate agent :)
• We called back (not mentioning that we were about to call him!!)
• He asked if there was any way that we could increase our offer (now if we hadn't just decided to call him, him calling would have PISSED ME OFF because I thought I'd made it quite clear we weren't going to offer more)
• But of course we offered 5K more because hell, we'd just been about to pick up the phone and offer 12K more but he didn't know that!!
• And as of 3 minutes ago (while I was blogging!!) our offer was accepted!!
  

WE ARE NOW THE PROUD OWNERS (subject to building and pest and finance!) of GIGANTOR!!! (and don't think I won't be getting a sign for that house that says that!! LOL

Real Estate Rollercoaster.....Not a fun ride

We had the new house in the bag. Our house we own on the Northside sold. We put our house we own in the Western Suburbs on the market (to ease the mortgage pain). Our shares were ready to be sold just as soon as the market went up a little.

Someone came along and bettered the offer on the house I'd fallen in love with. Two choices - give up the dream or go unconditional. Thankfully my more level-headed, less emotionally driven other half insisted we could not afford to run the risk of buying a house before the other one went unconditional. Chances are we've lost the house. Work is stressful. The kids are 'challenging'. My dream home that had that wow factor that was shared by all my friends..... gone in the blink of an eye. It could still work out. But right now I am numb - and cranky at myself for allowing this whole thing to become such an emotionally driven event. I mean it's just a house right? Right? Except it felt like 'home' already and it wasn't even mine. :(

anyone want to buy a house?

WE GOT IT - WE FREAKING GOT IT..........more sneak peeks :)








Now we just have to sell our house .... within 30 days. OMG.

If you can't sleep, blog

Because I think dear readers if you find yourself lying awake at night unable to sleep because you are constructing a blog in your head, then it's best if you just get up and go and write that blog. Plus I am getting sick of Geoff and Terry turning up, seeing me at the computer, asking me if I'm blogging and then laughing because they know I'm not... so here goes..... a blog entry!!

A lot has been going on lately ...... for the entirety of 2008 really and to be honest I'm a little over this year... which is unfortunatel really because according to my calendar we are only a little over 50% of the way through it.

Lately there's been a tonne of illness in our house (is that tonne or ton? I can never remember which way the Aussies spell it and which way the yanks spell it.... I'm going to go with tonne. Ton is shorter to spell ... and well.... that means it's probably the US spelling... you know.. to make it easier for them LOL)

anyway, I digress. 2008 has been filled with sinus infections, ear infections and just plain infection really. I won't even go into the events of a few weeks ago when on my week 'off' - plans filled with day spas, hair appointments, lunches with girlfriends and just general 'sitting on my arse with no kids to hassle me - both kids got severe conjunctivitis and were barred from daycare so instead of getting a massage, I got to wipe what looked like green caterpillars streaming from their eyes? Why I ask is this in none of the books about parenting...???? Amidst all of that I was ill myself so Darling Hubby had to stay at home, use up all of his annual leave, and care for us all. Sigh, what a week of joy...

And now our darling Mackenzie, whom I thought was going to breeze through teething like her poor sister never did, has spent the last 72 hours - attached to my hip - alternating between grizzling, sleeping, crying and laying there in a near coma with temps of over 39...... teething, ear infections and a throat described as 'ripe' by the doctor... lovely, so that'll be her 3rd lot of antibiotics this year alone. thrilled by that I am....NOT. So herein begins probably another year of this joy. Poor Zie. Poor mummy. I'm thinking that by about 2010 I can begin to sleep every night...all night. Probably for about a year before Charli's second lot of teeth start coming in... yay.

And dear Charli. there were a few weeks back when I was pretty sure I wanted to trade her in. You know, for a 3 year old who didn't talk back and refuse to do anything. Michelle assured me that all three year olds were like this but I had my doubts. But her little bursts of whatever causes her to become a maniac (and I can still blame teeth as her TWO-YEAR OLD MOLARS have not come through yet....blimey) seem to have subsided and she's back to just regular talking everyone's ear off and generally being a little know-it-all. Today she blew me away. We lay down for a daytime nap and read a story first. A story called Hattie and the Box (Fox) - she can't say F yet and after a very naughty word was yelled by mummy a few weeks back I'm actually really glad of this linguistic delay!!

Anyway, she put her hand over my mouth and declared she was going to read it. And she bloody well did - word for word (except for the last page which was "And they were all so surprised that no-one said anything for a very long time" which became "and they were surprised (thinking, thinking, thinking) ...and didn't talk" LOL..... anyway, I just about wet myself laughing when she did it again tonight for Dave. Having got over my astonishment at this display of parroting, I was able to listen properly to the inflections in her voice and she's got me down pat..... "Good grief, said the goose, Well well, said the pig" with this surprise in her voice and a cheeky grin on her face... just like Mummy must do every night..... hmm. At least I know I don't read in a monotone :) I'll endeavour to capture this on audio and blog it sometime soon.

And now onto the very large decisions regarding our abode. It's quite odd really..... for 6 months now (well much longer really) but ever since we moved in to this house to rent for awhile, I've been under the impression that one day we'd knock down and rebuild on our current block and I've really really wanted a Metricon style home (see the Laguna for example). You know, something crisp and modern with clean lines and a prize home feel about it. Which is very far removed from my ideal home when I was in my early 20's which was a wood and sandstone style queenslander with large verandahs, tall ceilings and a lovely open plan feel - but with that old rustic appeal. .... then Dave and I went to an open house on Saturday to this house...



Not a crisp modern style at all but a beautiful western red cedar SIX bedroom house set on about 1200m2 complete with cubby house, pool, gazebo, a flat section of yard for the trampoline and swings, a chook run (yes a chook run), fruit trees and a vegetable patch. Complete with 5 levels in the house in cascading split level design - Dave and I just LOVED it. We impulsively put an offer in that afternoon..........




and were promptly rejected the following day. The owner wants far more for it than we can offer... despite our offer being over his asking initial price. Sigh. I am torn between heart broken and trying to be all Zen about it. Either he will come to his senses and accept our offer (it has been on the market for about 4 months now)... OR I can see this house as the house that - while we did not get it - at least made the decision for Dave and I.... drum roll... we are once and for all selling our house that we've lived in for the last 9 years together. We cannot justify the expense of building a large house on this property when we can get 2/3 of the price of a brand new house by selling it..... so it goes on the market sometime this week. Anyone want to buy it?? LOL

I am sure there will be other houses..... other houses that Dave and I will walk in to and look at each other and smile. At least now I know what that feeling feels like. We've been to a few open homes over the last few weeks and I've walked away thinking "yeah I guess I could live here"... but let's face it folks, if you're going to spend that much money on a house.. you want to feel "oh wow" about it. So now.... we just have to find another 'oh wow' house. And in the current market... there'll be plenty more coming our way with falling prices I hope....

Well that's it for me. Not very eloquent but at least brings you up to speed. I feel like I've been letting down the whole "I am an A-type personality" title by seeming as if I"m not doing much. But it turns out that moving house, being ill a lot, raising 2 very independent monkeys who alternate between driivng me crazy and making my heart break with love, working a job that while officially part-time is really a full-time role, buying a new car (oh yeah we bought a new car), trying to stay in contact with friends and failing dismally most of the time... and now looking for a new house because I feel that moving once in a year is just not stressful enought..... well it turns out that all those things suck up quite a bit of time. Here's hoping those Practitioner Strength vitamin B tablets that the chemist slipped me today kick in soon with some of that 'energy' the bottle is promising me :)

Ciao dear readers
x

Alive but not well

Been a while huh? I've thought of blogging often. Late at night I find myself composing short blogs and paragraphs in my head, things I should post about that are funny or so tragic I figure it will give someone something to laugh at... or something to commiserate with me about. But unfortunately they've not yet written the technology that will take these in-brain musings and simply transfer them to the computer. By the time i arise the next morning i am confronted with yet another unmanageable day in my life and the blog is once again relegated to backburner of my life. So much has happened since january 3rd when I last posted. I could write for hours on the hell that has been 2008 thus far but something tells me (and my unstable emotional state supports this) that it's best not to relive the full extent of the horror but rather to just jot it down in dot points. Of course it's not going to sound as tragic that way and I will no doubt come across as a drama queen who needs to just take a valium and put things into perspective - and that could well be the case - however.....

January.

1. We decide to move in Sharon's house
2. I start packing up the inside of the house WEEKS before the move... Husband, whose job it is to clean up the living nightmare under our house, leaves it until approximately 7 days before our move....
3. The garbage skip cannot be put into our front yard and only barely fits onto the front footpath - much to the annoyance of the postman
4. the council decide the week before we have booked the removalists to come and tear up our entire gutter/footpath region to re-pipe. I have a heart attack that the removalists will not be able to move us. despite buckets of rain it gets done in time
5. the general stress of moving and changing over utilities and packing boxes with two small children 'helping' caused me to have a mini-stroke most nights
6. 18th jan - we move - the less said the better. STRESS
7. the day after the move we've arranged a friend to babysit so that dave and I can attend - child-free - his sister's engagement party. we look forward to a night out as adults. we barely talk to each other or anyone else that night as we are so exhausted we can't function.
8. we get home to our babysitter saying she was about to call as our youngest has a temp nearing 39 degrees
9. we give her panadol, she has a slight - what we think is heat rash
10. by 2 days later the rash is worse and i call the Qld health number. they take me through a gazillion questions about her symptoms (does she have a headache? how the hell do I know - she doesn't talk yet!!). They say not to worry unless I wake up in the morning and rash has spread
11. I wake up in the morning and the rash has spread.
12. I spend this week dealing with the clearing up of crap still at our old house (turning out to be 1000 more trips in the car than expected) AND with a child that has Roseola - turns out not to be a problem but before we knew what it was there was a little bit of worry involved.
13. Throughout all of this there are boxes
14. and more boxes
15. and many more boxes to be unpacked
16. I think by now it might be the end of January. it's hard to say, my life at this point is lack of sleep and unpacking boxes.

February

1. Unpacking boxes
2. Annoying tenant at old house keeps texting me with inane questions such as what is Optus phone number as we didn't leave the white pages in the house - for fuck's sake man..... call directory assistance. Sheesh. Call the real estate agent and put a stop to him calling me.
3. In this month we have an array of birthdays and I'm pretty sure that I was sick about three times - as were the girls. Having been on sleeping tablets for a month to control the 'moving anxiety' I also experienced a charming side effect of rebound depression - I recall a day of lying on my bed crying wishing I could just leave life behind me... a horrible feeling let me tell you. A trip to the GP got that under control..... sort of.
4. Late in February i get a call from mother-in-law telling me that my father-in-law can get in for his knee surgery about 6 months earlier than planned. Which is great news. Except for the fact that I then had to enrol Charli in childcare as she didn't think she could cope with both of them while he was recovering, which was fair enough - but the prospect of childcare freaked me out.
5. Took charli down to local childcare - she loved it so much and cried so hard when we left that I booked her in to start immediately.
   
6. First three days of childcare I dropped her off wihtout tears (Seeya Mum) but picking her up was an emotional ordeal. She would spy me, burst into tears and cry "i've missed you so much mummy"..... By the fourth day, the drop offs were heart wrenching. And they've not got better in the last 5 weeks. "I don't want to go to school" starts the day before and continues until I leave the childcare centre a hollow of my former self and drag myself to work.
7. I love my job - LOVE IT - but beginning each day with your child crying and saying they "just want to spend the day with you mummy" - well it's enough to drain the hardest-hearted person

March

What can I say about March really. Thus far 2008 has been a sleepless, illness-filled year and March has been the worst. Nights of Charli not going to sleep until 3am, 12pm, 10pm and then up again by about 4am with pleas to watch TV. By night 3 I could freaking care what she was doing as long as she let me sleep. The irony is that for the first time Zie started sleeping through from sundown to sun up - I think they tag team me. "Okay, I'll sleep well this month, you drive her crazy!!". It turned out to be an ear infection... the first of three we've had now this year. Anti-biotics seem to keep it under control momentarily but then the minute she gets another runny nose - a constant this season now she's in childcare - then she gets another ear infection. I'm assured that they'll clear up by the time she's about 4 or 5 - excellent!! Only another 365-730 more sleepless nights :)

On top of all this I seem to have developed the chronic sinusitis problems that plagued my mum for years..... a prospect that fills me with dread. On Saturday just gone (we've skipped over March, join me in April now)... I flew to Cairns for a job for 24 hours - the plane trip was a nightmare - having never flown with a sinus infection before i could not have imagined the pain that would engulf my head and ears on descent. I don't recommend it folks. I spent yesterday laid up in bed wishing I could breathe.

The problem with life at the moment is that so much crap has gone on that it's hard to focus on the funny and good things - the things that should be remembered, but I'll give it a go....

The good things

okay this post has been interrupted by receiving energy bills from our old address because our energy provider never cancelled our service as requested.... so as trivial as that seems its just one more blah in my life to deal with right now.... I'm off. I'll be back to report on good things soon... I hope.

Blogging drought record?

It would have to come close to being mine I think. Some may wonder if nothing has been going on and hence I have no reason to blog....when in fact the opposite is true. In reality I have found life so overwhelmingly busy and stressful of late that the thought of in some way capturing it in word form seems all too hard.

And yet so much has happened - much of which has been posted on others' websites (Shaz and Michelle namely) who were good enough to post about our holidays and Zie's party (or did I wrongly give credit to Michelle - was that all Shaz's doing??? oh well ;) ).

PhD is still under revision..... don't ask... does anyone remember me saying about this time last year "well at least I'll have my PhD by 2007?"... well think again... but 2008 is a sure thing.... I hope...... :)

Charli continues to astound me with her humour, her conversational ability, her cheek and her tantrums... not necessarily in that order. What terrifies me most is her ability to parrot me...
(overheard while playing with her dolls in the dollhouse)

Channy is speaking with Dora "Hi Dora"
Dora: Hi Channy
(catty comes up behind Channy and says "hi channy"
Channy swiftly turns around and says "Not now I'm talking, just wait".....

*sigh*.... perhaps I should learn to speak a bit more calmly when she interrupts me ...

She plays for hours with her dolls and makes up entire scenarios that just astound me. She talks my ears off most days and by the end of the day I could gladly put cotton wool in my ears and submerge under some water just to get some peace and quiet...... and I wouldn't swap her for the world ;)

Zie.... wow. where do i start. Today she clapped for the first time, she has 2 teeth - both of which have caused her only mild distress, she continues to refuse to be fed and must feed herself everything - which leaves me scrambling to make all her food 'finger food'.... try that with weet-bix people... it's a challenge. She has been pulling to standing for weeks now and in the last 48 hours is 'walking' while you hold both hands. She is cheeky and funny and she makes me laugh a lot.

Oh and after months of hearing me whinge and whine about how our house is too small for the four of us - and after months of too-ing and fro-ing about selling versus buying versus building versus packing up our entire lives and just moving to the sub-continent.... we have finally arrived at a decision to rent out our house and go and rent a larger house somewhere..... until we can decide whether to renovate this house, knock it down and re-build or sell and build elsewhere. This decision alone could take us years ;) In the meantime, I believe there is a house soon to be available for rent ???? :) stay tuned for updates.

This does not begin to update my life. But it will have to do..... and it's better than nothing.... Now I will return to my PhD-revising, packing-up-and-moving, slowly-going-mental-as-a-mother-of-two-small-girls life and let you get back to yours.

Ciao

Isn't it ironic.

You know that song by Alanis Morisette? That feels a little like my life lately. I especially draw your attention to the bridge section of the song that goes like this:

Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face

Sneaking up on me when I think everything's going right huh? More like ambushing me from a really high place and taking a crap all over me more like it. I'm trying to figure out who I've wronged as I have some major bad karma happening at the moment. Allow me to elaborate.

The Kitchen Debacle

A few weeks ago on a Friday morning I leave to take the girls to the playcentre and meet up with some friends and their kids ...... I return at about lunchtime with toddler and baby both asleep having not had lunch (always poor planning on my part because it means a short nap because they wake hungry) - to discover a veritable waterfall coming from our kitchen ceiling. I stand there dumbfounded - unable to quite believe what I'm seeing and not quite comprehending where the water is coming from given the drought. I then realise the solar hot water system must have shat itself.
Meanwhile our optusnet connection is out and I'm left wondering how to look up plumbers' numbers as in my de-cluttering phase I threw out hard copies of all the phone books. At this stage I've called Dave's mobile and work numbers about 10 times but he's not answering. Charli wakes screaming and I'm nearly in tears. The kitchen by this time is flooded and I can't quite figure out what to try and save first.

I finally think to look through the local paper that had been delivered the previous day and find myself a plumber who can come out ASAP. Scott rocks up about 3pm that afternoon and by the time Dave gets home he's ascertained that rats (yuck!) have eaten threw the piping and he's been unable to find a replacement piece of pipe (our local tradelink didn't stock it) - so he clamped it and was able to turn the water back on and said he'd be back next week with the part to fix it properly..... right, so we set about cleaning up. Takeout for dinner.

The following morning, Dave wakes me at 7am (much to my horror because it was meant to be my sleep in day) - and says we have a problem. I can hear water falling in the kitchen again and my heart sinks. Clearly (so we thought) - Scott's stop gap measure did not work. So I take the girls up to a friend's house for an early breakfast as the kitchen is unuseable, appliances such as the jug and kettle were saturated so I couldn't even boil water for Zie's breakfast and it was all just too hard trying to explain to Charli that she couldn't play in the disgusting water falling from the ceiling. Dave stays to call the plumber.

Mother-in-law comes to get Charli about 11am and the plumber also turns up. Turns out the rats waited until the plumber left and ATE SOME MORE HOLES... so his fix was fine - it's just more rats ate more holes. He fixes that pipe, turns the water back on, finds another leak and so on and so forth.......
Connie leaves with Charli, Dave and I set about letting everything dry and then start cleaning up. Just as I'm thinking of going to get Charli, water starts falling from the ceiling again (you've got to be freaking kidding me right? I hear you say...). Call the plumber who comes out (at this point I was in total denial about just how big his bill was going to be)..... and he has to set up some temporary piping OUTSIDE the house so that if rats eat through it at least it won't drip through the ceiling. Meanwhile, the insurance won't cover any of the plumbing costs - only the water damage.

Life 1 : Carla 0

The PhD - The Jury is back in

As for my PhD, the news is not good really. I'm still feeling really raw about the whole thing and quite in shock. Reviewer A, while making some comments regarding how it could be bettered when I publish (which he encouraged me to do), pretty much used the terms "an important contribution to the field", "addresses gaps in the current literature in this field" and ticked the box recommending me for a Dean's commendation. Exciting huh? Great ego boost? Well wait there's more.... and unfortunately it is not a free set of steak knives.

Reviewer B, in a nutshell, thought it was not worthy of a PhD standard, ticked "revise and resubmit" and seems to have some bee in his bonnet about the fact that I didn't do any independent research or data collection (I did all of this myself, data collection, conceptualisation, everything - so I'm not sure where he got that idea). So it had to go to an adjudicator, who has been a gem about the whole thing (I was pretty much in tears of despair on his shoulder having decided that if I had to do a major revise and resubmit I was quitting.....) and has said that while I have to write a letter addressing each of this examiner's comments, I don't have to necesarily take on board all of the comments, nor do I have to go through the examination process again - as long as the adjudicator signs off on my response letter.

Everyone keeps saying - "oh well that's good, not as bad as it could be then?". But really, it doesn't really feel great either. It's all just a bit of a nightmare really - 9 months after submission and it's still not looking like I'll graduate this year either.... I'm over the entire thing and not even sure what I want to do with my life. I keep telling myself once I get the PhD out of the way I can focus on a career direction...... but I don't even have a future at my current place of employment, which brings me to my next point.....

running score: Life 2: Carla 0

I'm sorry - do you work here?

I had big plans for 2008 work-wise. I was thinking about increasing my days to 3 per week. I was going to ask for funding to present a paper in Bondi in February next year... and quite frankly if it wasn't in the budget I was going anyway. Professional development (aka tax write-off) and all that.......I was going to network my arse off and perhaps make some connections for the future.

However, as of Tuesday last week, I've been told that I don't have a job past the end of the year as no part-time positions are being accommodated for in the current budget plans. So I've pretty much just been told to start looking for work elsewhere - really fits in with the 'family friendly' award they just won doesn't it? The bit I really don't get is how much I've been pushed to finish my PhD over the last 2 years and then they also grant me leave of absence for 4 months last year so I could complete it - right before I also had to take 6 months off to have a baby. And now I'm back on board with no more babies in our future and thus no more leave of absences from work..... committed to staying with them and they decide this is the time to say 'adios'? It makes no sense.

Life 3: Carla 0

But then - well sometimes life just hands you one. Yesterday after much deliberating about when we were going to put the girls in the one bedroom, we decided to take the plunge. There were many reasons for us wanting them to be in the one room.....and Charli's obvious reason of it will be easier to boss Mackenzie around if she's close by ALL THE TIME. But mostly it's really hot in the front room and from memory, Charli (when she was in that room) didn't sleep for about the 6 months that is summer here in Queensland. What possessed me to all of a sudden yesterday declare that THIS was the day it should happen I'll never know. Maybe it was because, let's face it, in four days we leave on a weekend away WITH NO KIDS. And I figured that if the first four days didn't go well, at least I'd have 2 days to recover and re-group before coming home to more pain.

My biggest concern of course was NEITHER of them ever sleeping. It took us close to two years to get Charli to sleep through - and with Zie still MONTHS off finishing teething (given she hasn't even sprouted one yet... well I could envisage much pain ahead of us with Zie waking Charli and Charli waking Zie and so on and so forth....

But you know what? Last night FOR THE FIRST TIME IN ...... OH ...... EVER Zie slept from 6pm til 4am (for a quick feed) and then through til 6am. Charli did not wake up at the 4am feed. When Zie woke at 6am, Charli still looked tired so Dave suggested she go back to sleep AND SHE DID for another hour. Meanwhile, let me re-iterate - Zie slept for 10 hours without needing my attention. Sure, I heard her wake about 4 times during the night and cry out - but obviously the snoring emanating from the nearby bed was comfort enough and I was allowed to spend a straight 6 hours without leaving my bed.

So there you go. Sometimes life just kicks you while you're down. Other times it just hands you one on a plate. Now the cynic in me might suggest that life is just building me up for another fall. But hey, I'm not the cynical type. Right guys? Guys??


Life 3: Carla 1 (and committed to evening the score)

A change is as good as a holiday...so they say.

Well I don't know about that... I think I would rather a holiday. This didn't quite work out the colour that Dave and I expected.... still, it will make a nice change not having to touch up my roots every 3 minutes!! My hair grows so fast since I've had kids.

The week in review

It's been a week like any other.... this week it's been washing clothes with some help from the girls :)



watching telly after a long and tiring day while eating ice-cream (this one was mine, charli was meant to have a bite. while she is eating this I am in the kitchen getting myself another one after Dave declares that I am unlikely to get this one back!!)

baking our first cake together. A home-made carrot cake. If I can work out how to post video (help Michelle!!) I'll post a video - very funny.



Charli in her 'mummy-made playschool-type car'..... it's pretty lame. I'll work on a better one soon.


And in true carla-style lately - a cheesecake to end the week. this one is a chocolate hazelnut one - except it has orange juice and rind in it so it turned out tasting like jaffas which doesn't really thrill me but Dave, Bekk and Matt seemed to like it. I of course am still eating it like there is no tomorrow - this pregnance weight is finding it hard to come off what with all of the cheesecake I'm eating!!! Note the piping of the cream - a much easier task after the Dora cake piping!!

An A-type Weekend

Well this weekend, like many others, was filled with 'projects'. Among these, another attempt at a cheesecake. In an attempt to mimic the last masterpiece, we again melted chocolate to 'drizzle' across the top - however, it did not drizzle, but rather 'blobbed' onto the cheesecake with such reckless abandon that we decided to smear it across instead......... then, to cover the rather un-aesthetically pleasing look of the top, Dave 'dusted' it with Quik (read, threw large amounts on top of it with the intention of shaking it off only to realise that it was a cheesecake in a springform pan and dusting it off was not really an option) - he then 'blew' it off - at which point large amounts of Quik blew straight back up into his face. I fell on the floor laughing - you had to be there I know, but it was pretty funny (and I'd had a Bailey's or 3 as all small children were out for the count!!). Anyway, here is the end result. Of course, we had forgotten how hard chocolate sets and it's now near impossible to cut a slice of this cheesecake, but we're managing somehow :)


In addition to baking, I also did a spot of gardening. After meeting Meegan at the Blackwood St markets this morning, I purchased 7 pots of herbs for $10 - what a bargain - and the garden that used to house a lemon tree before the Level 5 water restrictions claimed it's last breathe, is now housing the herbs - hopefully their root system will survive our water-deprived clay soil a little better than the citrus tree did!!



After the planting was done, I took some time out to just lie around and snap some pics of Mackenzie (see sweetheart, I DO take photos of you sometimes - pity I didn't take the time to clean the sleep out of your eyes too!!)



Hmmm, what else.... I know I did more than that. Oh well, maybe not so A-type of a weekend after all - it sure felt busy... oh yeah, that's right, I also spread nearly 2 cubic metres of mulch on the gardens... and I have the sore muscles to prove it. Night!!