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Bare and uncensored personal expression. Beware!!! |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** "This is pretty much what journals are all about, at least to me. I knew as I wrote them that even though they provided an excellent place for brain (and heart, and psyche) dump, they were mainly a map of me." --- Colleen Wainwright "Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it." --- David Sedaris "Please write again soon. Though my own life is filled with activity, letters encourage momentary escape into others lives and I come back to my own with greater contentment." --- Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey "In giving of myself onto these pages every day I allow myself to write regardless of the depth and meaning. I share myself with others without fear of recrimination for these are my thoughts, my feelings and my very being, and there are non who's opinion of me matters more than my own." --- Rebecca Laffar-Smith   The Writer's Round-About |
| Ok, so I did a little hop, skip and dance yesterday when the internet was finally connected again but it seems I rejoiced too soon. Nearly two hours after I got connected the connection disappeared on me. I was partway through reading the journals I frequent, catching up on the last three days when all of a sudden nothing would load. I moaned and groaned and repaired and reset and fiddled. Eventually I gave up and tried again this morning. Still nothing so back on the phone to the helpdesk. She talks me through everything I'd already tried and then decides she has no clue what the problem is and that she can't help me. What the??? Ok, so shouldn't the helpdesk be more... um... helpful? If they can't solve the problem shouldn't they be suggesting alternatives? Before she hung up on me I suggested there could be a problem with the modem so she gave me the contact of the company who makes the modems (yeah, like they can help). I tried calling them but after half an hour of being on hold with just a silent (felt dead) line I gave up and resorted to doing the troubleshooting I can do. I uninstalled the modem completely and started again. That seemed to work because I'm connected now and it's been up a few hours although I've only been activily using it for about 15 minutes I left it connected when I went out to the Multi-cultural day at Kaylie's school. This Friday is the last day of school for the semester. In Australia our school year is devided into four terms of ten weeks. After the second term it's considered semester break which is half year. Then they go back after two weeks holidays for term 3 and 4. Anyway, today as part of the lead up to holidays they had a family fun day. Multi-cultural day where they taught the kids about different countries and the kids dressed up in the traditional dress of other countries and families took various foods from around the world. Kaylie wanted to go as an American. With her Daddy in America she thought he'd be sending out some clothes and she'd be able to wear them. Of course we've not had anything like that arrive yet but I did my best to scrounge together something that seemed decent enough. Jeans a blue long sleeve shirt, sneakers and a blue, white and red beanie with a hood jumper. Ok so we Aussies where that garb too but I figured it would do for a pre-school family fun day. lol I also prepared nacho's with mild salsa and cheese as our share plate. I enjoyed it, I hope others did too.  Tomorrow her class has an excursion to the local hospital. They've been learning about doctors and nurses etc. in school and the kids are looking forward to seeing a real hospital. They love playing in the home corner which for this term was transformed into a hospital corner with gowns and white coats and stethescopes etc. The other update is about Paul. Well, he was due back this weekend. His month holiday from work is over and he should have been to work yesterday but he wasn't. Apparently he's decided to stay in America until August (which I presume is when his visa runs out). I suspect he'll come back in August to make preparations for living there permenantly. The good news is that I don't have to worry about getting him to visit the kids which was always a concern. I didn't want them to feel like he couldn't be bothered visiting them. Now with an ocean between them it's easier to explain that he lives to far away to pop over whenever he wants to but that he misses them. The other good news is that I can continue to use his car until at least August and possible after that if he does return to America. I'm glad that things seem to be working out between him and Sherri. It would have been awful for him feeling like he'd thrown away his marriage and his kids for nothing. Obviously the relationship wasn't working anyway but imagine being the one who had ended things because of an affair only to realise it's all a pipe dream. I'm happy for him, now if only I can find myself the perfect man. I best post this and get caught up on everything else. I ran out of time to do it all yesterday because of the loss of connection. Fingers crossed that it doesn't happen again any time soon. |
| *takes a deep breath of reconnected contentment before settling back in from of her writing.com journal* Well this weekend was horrible. Around midday Friday I lost my connection. No explaination. Nothing! Just gone. I spent the next hour or so doing my usual problem shooting then gave up thinking it would be back up in a few hours. Of course I went back to try again a few hours later. Nothing!!! By then it was past business hours and swiftly proceeding into the weekend. I toddled around the house bored and wondering if anyone was sending me emails or replying to my journal. Itching to read other journals and do my genealogy research. But, nothing... All day Saturday and all day Sunday this dilema persisted but being the weekend I couldn't reach anyone in my internet service providers offices. I decided I'd be calling them first thing Monday. Finally Monday arrives, for some reason we all sleep in until closer to 8AM which is good because it meant that other than checking if the connection was working I didn't have time to try and work out what to do instead of being on the computer. I got Kaylie to school, stopped at the shop to get milk and then came home shortly after nine and got on the phone. "We are experiencing higher than anticipated calls and you have been placed on hold, current wait time is 15 minutes. If you request is not urgent, please consider calling back at another time." Well, my request was urgent so I hung in there listing to the hold music which was reminiscent of old elevator music. 5, 10, 15 minutes come and go with this mindless music and the frequent interruptions of, "You call is important to us, we will be with you shortly." The biggest lie of the century. 20, 25, 30 minutes. At which time I turn to Josh who's playing at my ankles, "I think their idea of customer service is waiting until customers get sick of waiting and hang up." A minute later someone comes on the line. So, "chatter, chatter, chatter, try this, try that, try the other. Ok, I'll see if I can figure it out please hold." Back to the music but this time the wait is only a few minutes. She comes back on the line to inform me that the ADSL code for this line is no longer available and that I should call my phone company to find out what changes they have made. So I thank the lovely woman hang up and pick up the phone for another call. This time the on hold music is more modern. Possibly 60's or 70's music. Modern enough that I know the words and I put the phone on speaker while I wait and dance about the lounge room with Josh. Eventually someone comes on the line. She is completely clueless. Home Phone puts me through to Broadband. Oh yes, we connected you as of today. WHAT THE??? I didn't recieve any notification that it had happened. No modem in the mail with username or password or anything. Yes, well it was sent on Friday, should be arriving today or tomorrow. Anyway, thank you very much, hang up and wait for the postman. Thankfully the modem arrived by parcel post an hour later and I hooked it all up, got it all working. Trouble is I just payed till August on my last provider. Hopefully when I call to cancel that account they'll refund me. Probably not. I'm just hoping that I had completed my term with them else I'll have a bill for early disconnection. But now I suppose I shouldn't complain. Hopefully all the hassles are over and now my fixed, mobile and broadband are all with the same provider. It only took them 4 months to get me connected... It's done and now I just wait and hope the bill isn't too astronomical. Never did get the free cordless they were supposed to send out for changing my home phone plan. But I'm beyond caring. I don't need another phone and I'm more than happy to leave it as it is. I got the services bundled and I'm connected. That will do for now. The good news is that after a weekend of being internetless I'm back online and catching up with everything. |
| I hate it when one of my kids gets sick. Especially when they are as young as Josh is and can't tell you what hurts or how they feel. He's been so miserable all day and didn't sleep very well. He's at the stage where he's not a baby enough to sleep away the whole day when sick but not big enough to be still and settled down resting. It's nothing serious, just one of the many coughs and colds that go along with winter each year. So far I'm not following him into the sick bed but I'm knocking wood on that one because inevitably just as he's getting better I'll be struck down near death. Last night a neighbour who has a boy in Kaylie's pre-school class stopped by to see if I had any panadol she could have. I had just bought a brand new bottle to replace the bottle I just finished so I poured some of my new bottle into the old bottle and gave her that. Her little girl is about Josh's age and seems to be down with the same flu. This morning it was pouring down as usual and she stopped in to ask me if I could take her boy to school for her. Of course I did, he's a delightful boy and Kaylie thought it was exciting doing something a little different by taking a school friend to school too. Still I rushed back home to get Josh back inside out of the weather. I made sure I'd dressed him snuggly and this afternoon I wrapped him in a blanket when we went out. Still, he didn't much like being out and about and definately wouldn't let me put him down. Today was a day of cuddles and kisses, amongst fussing and food. I think today was harder because it's the first time he was sick since I stopped breast feeding. Any mother who breastfeed their babies would know how comforting it is to breastfeed them when they are sick. You can snuggle down together, warm, close and comfortable. And they settle, content to suckle and snooze the day away. We can't do that any more so he was grumpy and miserable and probably didn't get as much sleep as he could have were I still breastfeeding him. But babies grow up. And today I suppose was his first big boy sickness. Hopefully tomorrow he'll be feeling better. Unfortunately his being sick today meant I missed out on going out for lunch. My mother and grandmother were going to Sizzlers, an all you can eat buffet which serves incredibly yummy food. It's not expensive but it's more than I could budget in an average week which is why we rarely get to go there. It's a shame to have missed out on the lovely lunch and I didn't get to spend as much time with my grandmother as I'd have liked. It's her 72nd birthday tomorrow. Hopefully sometime soon I'll be able to get together with her for a while and talk genealogy. She's been a wealth of information in the past but I have more questions to ask her and know how to probe for the answers I want a little more now. Not to mention the detailed questionaire I've prepared.Anyway, that's all that's interesting on this end. Nothing much happening this week. Trying to make progress on The Davinci Code but I keep getting interrupted. It's not easy to sit back and read a book when you've got a sick 1 year old. He likes sitting and rocking but doesn't like it when Mum's attention is not centered on him. But now's my chance, kids are asleep and I've got a couple of hours until Lost is on. Time to log off and snatch a chapter or three. |
| Ok, well Bdigital have forgotten me. At least it feels like that. I've been onto them since February to switch me onto their Broadband deal so I can bundle my fixed, mobile and internet. It would have cost me $5 more a month than my existing provider but I thought the convenience of not having to use a credit card to pay would balance things out (especially since I don't have a CC) But alas, still not connected. Thankfully I had an existing broadband but that's part of my chaff too. You see the excuse they've given me is that they are waiting on Telstra to get back to them about the ADSL capability of the line. I'm using ADSL on that line every day with my existing broadband, thus it's enabled, why do we have to wait on Telstra. But fine, wait on Telstra, but why has it taken months? Anyway, I'm sick of it. Now if they call to ask me about the broadband I'll tell them I've changed my mind. Now I'm looking for a new provider for my fixed, mobile and broadband. I want to bundle them together. I need a mobile provider who does a deal on SMS since that's primarily what I use my mobile for. I SMS people with comments because I'm very speedy at it and then if they want to talk they call me.  I could hold entire conversations via SMS but more often than not my family cave and call me back lol.Anyway, so I want plenty of SMS on a great deal for my mobile. I want cheap local calls and a reasonable line rental on my fixed line. It would be great if it also had message bank and caller ID. And I want unlimited broadband at 512. Bundled together. With one provider and one bill. Now, I was talking to a friend on Essential Baby in the Money Managing forum. We'd just announced our highs and lows for last week and she mentioned that she was very pleased with her mobile phone bill because the company she uses gives you a credit on your bill if you pay on time. I asked her who she used and she told me she uses Orange. Yes, I know it's a fruit, but it's also a mobile phone service provider here. I went to Orange.net.au to check out their deals. It's actually 3 which is interesting. (3 is the name of a mobile phone service provider, yes very strange names.) But that wasn't what I am semi-venting about. You see the description on Google says, mobile, fixed, broadband. Which to me means they would offer all three and if they offer all three they must bundle. All I can find on the site is their mobile phone deals. Well, I dropped them a general sales enquiry to ask them about their other services, if they bundle, and if they do credit on bills paid on time or early. I always pay my phone bill early. It's set to direct debit but I generally pay is prior to the DD date so that it's paid and I don't risk it come out when there isn't enough money in the bank to cover it. Or at least that's what I used to do. Now I've got the Equityline I'll leave it to DD itself because the longer the money stays in my bank the better my mortgage is doing. So, that's todays mundane entry. I'm on the hunt for a new telecommunications service provider. I did like the deal Bdigital offered for bundling the broadband but since it's been months since I agreed to that offer and nothing has happened with it I've given up on believing that a new modem and cordless phone is in the mail. I guess I'll see what other companies can provide in the way of bonuses. Someone out there must have a deal to suit my needs. They are usually so customisable these days. |
| Sunday was rather fun. I spent most of the day in the kitchen. My pasta was a bust. I prepared it too early so it ended up really dry. Next time I'll boil the pasta first and prepare it last once everyone is here rather than before they arrive. The salad and eggs however were beautiful. My sister Tracy asked where I got the recipe and I couldn't help but laugh. I don't generally use recipe's, back of the box cooking instructions for cakes etc. but other than that it's all by touch and taste. I know how to mix compatible flavors and textures for effect so I frequently create lovely concoxtion you wouldn't normally have. Yesterdays significant new recipe is the eggs. It's a family recipe to hard-boil eggs, put the yolk into a mixture of mayonnaise, and curry, mix it all together and then spoon the mix back into the egg whites. This time since I'd done a ceasar salad with chicken and a chicken pasta I cut up some chicken and mixed it with ceasar salad dressing instead of mayonnaise. It was beautiful. The ceasar salad was basic, cos and hydro lettuce, tomato, cucumber, chicken. No onion (I never use onion when cooking because I hate onion) I skipped the bacon, I had a whole unopened packet and I only needed one strip for the salad so I didn't both about it, I also didn't add croutons and on afterthough the bacon and croutons would have perfected the ceasar salad. I did add cheese, not parmasen because I don't much like the tang of parmasen but regular mainland tasty shredded. It tasted great and I have plenty left over for lunch today because I prepared so much of it. My sister Amanda didn't end up coming after all that. It was getting on to five when we decided to call her so I'd know if we needed to wait dinner much longer. I don't know why she didn't come, she was definately planning too. I suspect my mother is going to chew her out about it. Those Sunday's are family days that I started up because the connection with family is very important to me. As such all our family schedule their weeks around those Sunday's. Missing it means you better have a good reason. My Grandma missed it too. She's got the flu.  It's her 73rd birthday this Friday so I hope she's feeling better by then. My mother and I are planning to take her out on Thursday (Mum works all day Friday) to celebrate. I've already got her birthday card and I'm trying to think of something special to give her.So we didn't end up seeing any movies. I gave my sister Tracy the Star Wars video's I'd inheritted from my brother. It was good to be able to give it to family, especially since she wanted Star Wars and had made sounds about being jealous that I had the trilogy on DVD. Since I'd bought it on DVD I had wondered what I would do with those video's. I couldn't give them to a stranger or sell them because they came from Gaelon but giving them to Tracy puts them in a good home. Yesterday ended up being great fun. My ex-step-father (lol, it's a long story) Rob stayed for dinner but he helped me out with a few things around the house. Not so much because I wanted to do stuff that day but he'd come over to check out the bathroom because we are in the planning and budgeting process of renovations. We are planning on gutting the bathroom and he was a bit worried that there might not be a cement base under the bath. It'll be an added expense if we pull up the bath to find nothing but the earth under the house. There is an access point in the bathroom so it is possible. Oh well. It's getting done, it's just a matter of getting the money together. Renovations done in bit parts. lolAnyway, Tracy gave me an old annex she had in her old house. We set that up over the swingset out the back and the backyard is starting to look like a back yard rather than the jungle it used to resemble. Now to level out the pool put in the footpath down the side and create the pond for which I already have the rocks and basins. Not to mention tidy all the unused things off the back porch and I'll have a backyard I can really be proud of and where the kids will have lots of fun. Rob also helped me move a cupboard into the cavity we created in the toilet. We'd moved a half height cupboard from there into the kitchen on which I now have the microwave and we've now moved the laundy cupboard into the toilet so that's where I'll keep all the things from that cupboard and it opens up the laundry a little more. The cupboard used to take up a lot of room in there. Other than doing those few things we enjoyed sitting and chatting and eating lollies. Talking trivia (from the Fantales of course) and later after Rob had left we had a hunk fest when Tracy suggested searching for Orlando Bloom online. She loves Orlando and was overawed when I showed her how to do an image search on google. 76,000 pictures relating to Orlando Bloom. She was in heaven. Thankfully we only had to look at about 300 before my mother got sick of doing it and insisted she give up. I suspect she'll be back another day to see the rest. lol At the end of the night, after the kids were in bed and Tracy had headed home I talked to Mum about finances. She thought I had a lot of money left over from the $100,000 mortgage so I sat with her and showed her how that got divided. She also thought I was doing well on the money from the government so I showed her the budget I had worked out where she can plainly see that I'm just making ends meet. She thinks I shouldn't be depending on Paul's money just incase he stops paying but the truth is, if he doesn't pay then the ends won't meet. I'm working on making budget cuts but knowing where I can cut and paste money takes time. I do know that I'll have to concentrate on my willpower and stop spending. I mean printers, DVD's and takeaway are a no no from now on until all my renovations are finished. I did however arrange to have her pay my Ancestry.com subscription so I now have access to all the UK census. I've already expanded some of my information just last night and I'm looking forward to being able to knuckle down into it all. I always need a solid, mind-holding project and at the moment Genealogy is it. I had reached a dead end on the 1881 census and spent last week going round in circles because I wanted to work on it but had nothing to work with. Now I do. Meanwhile, that was yesterday. Nothing interesting today except that I'm not running late. lol Gotta run to get Kaylie ready for school. |
| Well apparently it's been two weeks since the last time I had all my family here for dinner. It doesn't feel so long because my mother and ex-step-father were here for dinner last Sunday but it has been two weeks since my sisters were here. I've got chicken in the fridge and should probably start thinking of getting everything ready. It's only 9AM but I've got to catch up with the dishes and get the kitchen into order. Hopefully I'll get a couple of loads of laundry washed and folded before they get here too. I should also think about what I'm going to do with the chicken I have, how can I turn it into a great meal? Mmmm, ponder, ponder. I'm thinking of cooking it up and then pulling it all off the bone and either doing a stir fry, a salad or something along those lines. I kind of like the idea of a cold chicken salad but that's more a side dish than anything. What would I put with it? Perhaps a spiral pasta with chicken and mushroom sauce and chicken ceasar salad to dress? Mmmm, salivating just thinking about it. But if I want to prepare that then I need to get to the shop this morning too because I don't keep fresh salad stuff on hand and I'll need some bacon for the salad too. My sister Amanda mentioned something about taking Kaylie to the movies this afternoon. I don't know if that will happen or not and I haven't told Kaylie anything about it. What I'd love to do is leave the kids with my mother and go to see Mr. and Mrs. Smith with both of my sisters. I'll have to mention the idea when they all get here at 3PM. My mother left me a book to read yesterday. The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. I've heard a lot of rave about it but must admit one of the documentaries made about the book turned away my interest. It seemed preachy and a little far fetched. I mean they were trying to draw all sorts of significance in DaVinci's paintings and I think he would laugh his head off at the theologists and tell them it's just a painting lol. Anyway, Mum remains adament that the book is nothing like the documentary and that it's a fiction story that is gripping and compelling. I'm willing to give her the benifit of the doubt so I'll start reading it and see how it turns out. It's not a book I would have taken from the shelf myself despite being a New York Times bestseller. Anyway, better get this show on the road, lots to do and probably not enough time to do it. |
| Sorry to anyone who suffered through my entry yesterday. It was helpful to rant like that but I shouldn't have subjected you all to it by making it public. *distracted by kids a moment* Josh has taken every single one of the video's off the shelves and spread them out across the floor. *sighs* KIDS!!! Who wants 'em? Anyway, today is a day for housework because hopefully Kaylie will keep Josh out from under my feet. No school is always great. I'm probably one of the rare parents who think that but Kaylie is so little trouble that it's actually more effort to get her to and from school each morning than it is to have her home. That makes Saturday and Sunday's less chaotic. I must admit I'm not so keen on the two weeks holiday's coming up shortly. I got a new printer and already regret it. That's one of the terrible things about retail therapy. You buy things inspite of your situation. I must admit I bought one of the cheaper models which is part of my regret. It doesn't help that it's already not working properly and I wasn't too pleased about ending up with the display model but not getting a discount for the fact that it had been out of it's box.It does do the job for the most part however. I haven't really given it a true test by printing a dozen pages in a row yet but I did print up a page with two photo's and they came out pretty good. Not perfect Kodak quality, definate digital photo's with printer strips but for what I need it will do. Printing black and white does fine as well. But for some reason, it's been printing the image onto the page and then freezing instead of spooling the paper off. I've had to cancel the print job and then it spits the rest of the paper out for me. I'll have to troubleshoot that problem and see if I can figure out how to fix it. My mother is coming around today. I'm looking forward to her finally moving house because she won't be visiting me so often (I hope). I love my mother but sometimes her presence here is judgemental and I feel terrible about minor things, like the dishes in the sink and toys (and video's) strewn across the floor. I love that she wants to come here and help me keep this house in order but I don't like the way I feel guilty about it getting into a mess in the first place. It's my own fault, I don't keep at the housework like I'm supposed to. The dishes build up as rapidly as the laundry and it's been a week since I last vaccuumed. I suppose I should get started on it now so I don't feel to terrible when she arrives. |
| Ok, so many of you who've been reading for the past month or two know that I've recently (January, Wow! nearly 6 months) separated from my husband. I had trouble finding a rental property for me and our two young children so ended up deciding to buy the home Paul and I had lived in from Paul. Put in a home loan application with my Credit Union (with whom I do all my banking) and was accepted. Anyway, there was a lot of delay on getting the application through and then more delay with court papers and title transfers etc. So it took about four months to get that sorted out but I signed the papers on the 24th of May, settled on the 31st, financed on the 8th of June. House belongs to me. Well apparently because it wasn't a sale it was just a transfer to title the conveyencing people didn't notify Rates, Water etc. so Paul gets a bill for rates and wonders why he's bouncing payments (they closed all his bank accounts when they finalised the loan on my payment to him, basically I paid his mortgage and took the burden soley in my name, but without a housing loan he no longer had any accounts so he no longer has any bank lol it was a hilarious dilemma at the time, especially since the payout wasn't correct and I still owed him $1000 for the sale of the house.) Anyway, so I go up to the rates office to explain that Paul no longer owns the house and that I will now be paying the rates and water payments etc. They've got no notice of a transfer of land so they don't think I exist. AHHHH anyone else pulling their hair out yet? The told me to call up conveyencing and get them to fax through proof of sale. I called the bank they give me the whole line of no it wasn't an official sale so we aren't responsible for doing that, you gave us a few hundred dollars to put your name on the title instead of his but that's all. Well I played the clueless blonde card on them and they caved, deciding to save us both a lot of trouble and fax it through to DOLA (Department of Land) office. Apparently that still takes a few weeks to become official because it sits on a desk in the DOLA offices before anyone does anything with it. But hopefully before the July 1st that will be done (fingers crossed because if it isn't done by then I pay full rates and water but if it's done before then my government parenting pension gives me a discount). So, another banking dilemma hopefully dealt with. Meanwhile I'm still waiting on my new card in the mail thinking excitedly that I'm taking another step towards full independence, my very first credit card. I got my pin at the beginning of the week and today the card arrived in the mail. I open it excitedly looking forward to seeing the shiny silver VISA printed on it. NO VISA!!! I've been send a debit card with no credit access. My account is a credit account now and while I can access it from a debit card as a savings account it costs be about a $1 every time I do so. I call up the bank and explain that I understood my new card being issued would be a Visa card as I now needed a Visa to make use of my Equityline credit account. "No sorry ma'am, there is no note of that here and you have not been approved. We insist on three months history with our bank." "Oh, oh, but I have that, this account is new but I've been with the bank for years and the equityline was a transfer from my ex-husbands account to mine." "Oh I understand, well there is no not of a visa approval, I'm affraid you will have to put in an application." GGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. I've been waiting patiently for the card because I have a couple of bills on my list to be paid that need a visa. Once again I'm going to have to depend on someone else to use their card on my behalf. And I've been excited about signing up for Ancestry and ordering those genealogy certificates but I can't do that now either. Why do banks, even credit unions, trail you around this? It's the sort of bullshit that makes me want to take my business elsewhere. Of course every bank is as bad as each other and to refinance my loan a week after it was finalised is going to cost me another $1000 in fee's. I think that's why they play games with you. They've got you by the balls once you owe them money. Oh well. Off to buy a printer this afternoon I think. I can at least have enough independence to be able to print the application form off myself. I'd been putting off the purchase of that until I could see if my finances held up after paying for the genealogy items but since those aren't on the menu for the moment I can definately manage a new printer. Hopefully so retail therapy at Harvey Norman this afternoon will help my mood. Sorry for such a long ranting post today but I had to let off steam and this journal is great for that. Especially since I know you are all bursting to jump in with condolences and commiserations. |
| I'm one of those normal people who hate housework. I particularly hate washing dishes, the idea of that food and grime etc. all over my hands makes me shudder but wearing gloves is inconvenient so I just deal with the filth. I don't mind doing laundry so much because in my house it's a case of sort the clothes, put a load in the machine, add powder and press the buttons to get it started. I have a machine that has a soak cycle so you program it for a heavy soak and it fills up, agitates, soaks for an hour, agitates wash cycle, rinse, spin and turns off. Then it's a case of rotating, wet clothes into the tumble drying, dirty cloths in the machine. By the time the soak cycle on the machine is finished for the second load the first load has had an hour and a half in the dryer and is ready to be put away. This works for me. I rarely hang anything out on the washing line because I don't like the outside. In Summer it is too hot to stand out there putting washing on the line and in Autumn, Winter and Spring the weather is too unreliable to expect it to stay dry. (yep copout, basically I just don't do washing lines lol) But still, with so simple a laundry routine it piles up. It's amazing how many clothes kids go through. I mean each morning on goes the school uniform for Kaylie, a set of clothes for me and Josh. After school the uniform comes off and depending if she stayed dry during the day there could be two or three of these that end up in the wash. Play clothes go on Kaylie, Josh may or may not have needed a change of clothes during the day. Dinner at six usually means both kids sets of clothes in the wash and bathtime. Pajama's then PJ's in the wash in the morning and start all over again. Kids wear a lot of clothes. At least while they are as young as my two are. Then there are sheets, towels, pillows and doona's. Kaylie is unreliable for staying dry at night. She generally wears pullups to bed which are like diapers but designed for toilet trained kids because they can be take up and down like undies when they go to the toilet. But this doesn't guarentee the bed will be dry in the morning. And I've got a dog. I paid $300 to have him spayed hoping to stop him scenting on everything. It didn't work. So unless I remember to keep all three bedroom doors closed I'll likely find out just as I'm putting kids or myself to bed that the dog has struck and I need to strip and remake the bed. It's not just laundry either with kids. TOYS!!! You don't realise how many toys kids have until they are spread across the living room, both kids bedrooms, the hallway and kitchen. Usually I try to restrict Josh's toys to the living room and Kaylie's toys to her room but there are so many of them. Every few months I get in there with a garbage bag and we do a toys for charity sort. All the toys they haven't played with for the last couple of months go in the bag. Usually this means a bag full for charity (donation to the Salvation Army stores etc.) every couple of months. I don't buy the toys either, family give my kids toys. For birthdays and Christmas I'll usually get them both something big (last year it was a trampoline, year before a swing set) and one toy each then perhaps clothes or books etc. But my family each give them toys and last birthday Paul went crazy on toys to compensate for him not being around much. So, doing laundry and picking up toys all day long. Then there are dishes. It's not so bad with just the three of us. Breakfast usually consists of two bowls, three spoons and sometimes a measuring jug and/or frypan. Two knifes and a plate for lunch. Three plates, two forks, two knives, a spoon and various pots, pans etc. for dinner. Some nights there is too much chaos after dinner getting kids to bed etc. that I don't have a chance to do the dishes and in the morning I never do dishes until at least 10AM because the sun shines directly on that window causing blindness. But it manages to pile up, dishes breed, I swear it. Then there are the general chores you have to do, toilets, laundry rooms, bathrooms, vacuuming, mopping, windows, dusting. It just repeats over and over and over again. Why can't a house stay clean after you've cleaned it? It's not like we do anything special to make it dirty. Dust gathers, moisture and heat etc. sand and grass clippings trailed into the house, a dog doesn't help. It's endless. On my list of "when I'm rich" goes the house keeper. Someday none of this stupid house work will be my problem. Imagine a life when someone else does it all for you? I can just raise and enjoy my kids and my hobbies and leave everything else to the house keeper. *drifts off to enjoy fantasy land for a while longer* |
| Ok, so a part of Genealogy is getting to know the places these ancestors were born. At the moment I'm working with family that were all born in England, mostly around Middlesex. But England... how does anyone there figure their way around? It's a huge maze of streets and localities, counties, regions etc. I have found a fairly decent map at http://www.viamichelin.com/viamichelin/gbr/dyn/controller/Maps which allows me to be fairly broad in my description as well as letting me search specific streets/addresses when I have them. And then I can zoom in and out to try and work out the surrounding area's and thus place the location with others I'm getting familiar with. Unfortunately this map doesn't seem to have any area division lines? Where does one reagion/county end and another begin? Hoxton for example seems to be right in the middle of Islington and Shoreditch. So which does it belong within? Or maybe neither? Are both of these places within Middlesex? If so how do you know the bounderies of Middlesex? Does it stretch all the way to Paddington and Pancras? Not only is the dilema of place names in the hear and now, but England is hundreds, thousands, of years old and it has changed a lot with time. What a place was called may not be what it is now called. So you have to learn not only it's name today but what that same region has been known as in the past. It's all driving me fairly loony. But hopefully given time and perhaps some wise English founded assistance I'll get the hang of the place. I am surprised to find out that most of my ancestors lived fairly central to London. Would it stand to reason that they were fairly well off financially? I know in Western Australia the closer you live to Perth the more expensive it costs (at least going Metro, once in the country things vary on closeness to the ocean). Does this same reasoning work for England? Or were there mostly poor hovels in central London. It's times like these I wish Scarlett weren't soaking up the sun in Greece. You lucky thing, I'm still green-eyed with envy. Don't hurry home on my account Scarlett but when you do get back perhaps you can save me from my English Map Quandery. |
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