Wednesday, November 07, 2007

It's been a long time baby

Well I'm still officially up the duff. The bun has risen indeed and is becoming as volatile as a bottle of home brewed ginger beer. T-minus six days and counting, of course there is a certain amount of give and take with these things. There is no definite when and where so a certain amount of thumb twiddling is done to pass the time, well one would presume naturally. But in the land of all things ness it is in the state of a proverbial downpour.

Let me paint a picture...

DTB-Dad-to-be has put off renovations until the last minute. Squandering a whole winters worth of weekends on kicking back and putting feet up. Now that it is evident baby will come soon he freaks out and starts ripping the house apart so that the babe will have a room of its own. Partly encouraged by myself of course as I have no intention of rooming with the bairn until it is 5. Amongst the frustrations of a mechanic doing renovation work is the constant reminder from said DTB that he could be fishing or water skiing. Yes well if this was done way back when we had time for such things, when the weather wasn't nice and warm then he would have all the time in the world to go fishing and water skiing, are you all with me on this one???

Classes are still progressing and all the time I have had the past five weeks off work have been spent relaxing. I should have been more diligent in completing unfinished class work in preparation for my portfolio but no, I've squandered my time...not entirely but quite considerably. I am now due to drop the calf, as someone so eloquently termed it the other day, and am freaking out that I don't have the work to make the portfolio something to be proud of. Going through all the briefs with the tutor last night I discovered that my work has improved markedly in the past few months but still I am in that comparison trench of "it's not as good as others" I'm sure I have some selling points to work with when it comes to being gainfully employed again.

Giving up work was a wonderful thing. The place was becoming a source of much frustration to myself with management changes and the testosterone in the air was too thick for my liking. Several "kicks in the teeth and stomach" sealed my glee at leaving and I'm not looking forward to returning. I was under some serious delusions that I was an important member of their team there after serving 7+ years and it felt to me like they were too happy to send me off with a bunch of flowers and a gift voucher. So generous, so thoughtful, can you feel the sarcasm?

My mother was arrested the other day for breaking into cars. The poor woman. Symptomatic of her disease, I'm sure. She had escaped out of the fortress that my dad has created of their home when my brother left the gate open. Dad went out on a recovery mission and discovered at the garage 1.5kms down the road that they had found this vagrant lady trying to break into their customers cars and called the police. So my dad dutifully went to the police station to collect her and they discovered that she had discharged herself. The cleaner had nothing to do with it! They found her down the road trying to get into cars again. This is a massive source of amusement for myself. Imagine, detained people waltzing out the back door of the police station!!! My real mother, the one I knew before Picks took over, would rather die than be hauled off to the cop shop let alone try to open a car door that didn't belong to her. Thankfully my sense of humour in such situations comes from my dad so we both have a good chuckle over this one.

Rosie is still our number one favourite source of love and affection. She is just the best dog in the world. The amount of love that comes to us from her is immeasurable. We are so blessed to have her in our lives, is this what it is like to have children of your own?

I find myself pretty disgruntled with myself at being a step-mum on the weekends. It may have something to do with trying to work with a child who has learnt a completely different way of living without the same morals and ethics and manners as myself. just basic stuff such as hygene and routines. I am in continual conflict with myself and her and as she gets older and hormones come into play it is really giving me a taste of what I was once like, well not quite but I'm sure there are similarities. I find it astounding how much of an attitude a 10 year old can have, complete with death stares and indifference. It is never too early to enforce ground rules peeps! Still she says she loves me at the end of the day so I guess I'm forgiven.

After three months of changes and frustrations I have completed my cousin-in-laws wedding invitations. I'm really happy with them and it has been one heck of a learning curve in some areas. Also learning to work with the constraints of others ideas and wishes is a good lesson to learn if I am ever to do this for a living. They weren't that straight forward to start with. The invitation itself is a wine label on a mini bottle of wine. They had the images from the venue to use in the background but both the images were of a different tonal value so when I converted them to look the same they both came out with very different looks. The groom was telling me it was all fine but I, the perfectionist concerned with consistency, sweated buckets over the images. I nailed it finally and it was well worth the agony. Nothing like a deadline flying past to get it right! The whole package is pretty neat, I created a wine bag to present it all in and which contains a RSVP post card, registry card and also a directory of accommodation suggestions and directions to the area. A really cool package to receive and since they were handing them out by hand they got to see first hand their guests reactions. Well worth the effort.

I also had fun designing baby shower invitations for the combined shower my SIL and I had at the beginnig of last month. This was a lot easier as I had the idea in my head already and didn't have to try and keep someone else happy. I also designed the thankyou cards at the same time so they were a nice package. The course has come in very handy.

Well amongst a myriad of other things going on I have managed to keep my head above water. I'm madly treading below the water line but still here!

Better go and stop this procrastinating. Great to catch up with you all and hope you're all well and thanks for dropping by.