Dear Kevin Rudd and co.

There is one overriding question for my caucus colleagues, and that is who is best placed to defeat Tony Abbott at the next election.

Kevin Rudd
No there’s not Kev, the question is who is the best person to lead and govern this country with its best interests at heart and not their own personal agenda.
You have  all forgotten that you are there to do a job.
The problem is everyone is so busy tying to keep their jobs that they aren’t actually doing their jobs.
You all need to just get off your little tushies and get back to work.

 

whirlwind

Well once again, life has had a way of sneakily whisking away time like nothing else and I find myself almost half way through January in the year TWO THOUSAND AND TWELVE.

Holy crap.

So much has happened, and is happening..the best of which is me being able to say “I’m getting married this year!” Preparations are well under way with a meeting with our celebrant in the next week or so, invites ready to be posted out and a few details to iron out. But before all that we have to pack, and move. And I need to start my training for my new position. I’ve been doing it now for 5 or so weeks, but the official start of training is Monday  16th. Amongst all that I need to get off my ass and really focus on pushing the photography as a business! With all these things on the go, I need to find two things: More energy and more time! If you have the secret to attaining these two things, please advise immediately….

Work is good…I’m thoroughly enjoying the challenge and the massive learning curve that comes with it. I need to find my feet quickly so that the staff will take me seriously as an authority figure. We are all getting there. It’s hard for them too when they’ve had 4 assistant managers in 12 months. Each person brings their own ideas and methods to the job, and I’m still finding mine while at the same time trying to appear as though I know what I’m doing! My manager is an amazingly talented women who has the patience of a saint with my never ending questions and ideas She’s flexible and personable and we actually have a fair bit in common. She’s allowing me the freedom to do whatever I’d like to make my job easier or to run smoothly and basically has said “Kell, I don’t care how or when or in what order or on what day you do everything, as long as it’s all done by the end of your working week.  Do it how you’d like to do it. ” I’d like to stay with this store for as long as I can so I can learn from the best. The staff are great and have simply accepted this green CSR who’s only been with the company for 9 0r so months. I’m proving myself to them though and will continue to do so.

Kids are great. Still a few issues we are working on, and appointments have been had, letters been written and strategies in place for one of those issues. We’ve been extremely lucky to be accepted for the first house we applied for after the one we are renting was sold, more on that a little later.  The new place is very close to the bus run for Caitlyn to get to high school this year, the other two don’t need to change schools – which was never going to happen anyway. It just means that amongst the turbulence of a new home and weddings and new jobs and the like, they at least have some stability in that regard. We’ll be asking for a long term lease once the initial period of 6 months is up. Then we can work on sorting our crap out so we can buy in the future. At the end of the day, when renting you run the risk of being booted at any time if the owner decides to sell. We don’t want to keep living like that. If any of you have a spare 40 grand you could GIFT to us, that would help alot!

On the subject of moving, our current real estate agent totally sucks. It turns out that the way they’ve done this all has been wrong, and I’m in half a mind to bloody report them once we are out. Lying sacks of shit. Money hungry  bastards. I could go on, but you get the point. So pleased to be away from them lets put it that way! This whole looking for a new rental on a time limit totally sucks. First you have to view the place, which is at the open homes. Except they quite often hold open homes during the week. Fantastic! So basically those people that can actually afford the bloody place are WORKING. Morons. Then if you do go on the weekend ones, there are so many people that you can’t really see properly, or get a decent car park and you are just rush rush rush. Not really the best way to be choosing your next home. Ultimately I don’t care that it’s someone else’s HOUSE, while we live in it, it’s our HOME. And it would be nice to be able to take the time to see that potential home properly. As it is with the time limit imposed by the termination due to sale notice, you really can’t afford to be picky! I haven’t even seen the inside of this new house. Ant has and I trust his judgement. We basically accepted because we just want it done and dusted and get in and settled before the new school year starts. No more open homes or stressing about the right damn paperwork and catering to every bloody whim the real estate agent has. Some want to know basically how many toilet paper sheets you use when wiping your ass. Doesn’t matter now I guess. We have somewhere to move, once the wedding and everything is over we’ll start thinking a little more long term and hopefully set some goals so we don’t have deal with this shit for much longer.

Wedding prep is well underway. We’ve found ourselves a lovely celebrant who lives in the lower Blue Mountains and knows what a sand ceremony is! Hopefully we’ll meet up with her either tomorrow or the following saturday to pay a deposit and lock her in. We’ve got the food sorted, my dress is picked up with some minor alterations to be done. We’ve decided what is going where on the day. And the invites are sitting on the bench waiting for me to send them out. GO US! Once we have moved I’ll hopefully come back and share a few more details with a little more detail than this.

 

Best be off…need to start packing.

Oh thrill oh freakin bliss.

Wanna come help anyone?!

exhausted…but smiling!

We’ve been having a hard time lately with one of the kids…some of you know what is happening and some don’t. For those that do I would appreciate your co-operation in not discussing details here. For those of you who don’t, please don’t ask! This post is about reminding myself that we are in fact making progress and have taken some steps forward, no matter now small. When we inevitably take 10 steps back I can come back and read this and remember that there is hope and that we CAN and WILL do this and get through the other side. It’s so far been an emotional roller coaster that is draining, exhausting and downright disheartening at times. The small victories mean a lot and offer us a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel.

Today was a GOOD day. For more reasons that one. Here’s a brief summary:

No phone calls
I had a win…in fact I had several.
Someone now knows that I am smarter than the average bear
Major meltdown was averted
I was, and still am, IN CONTROL all whilst maintaining an illusion to the contrary

Today was a GOOD day, and there will be more….bring ‘em on!

 

 

body butter

Our skin is soft and smells of honey with a touch of peppermint. We are totally awesome cos we have home made body butter.

Found a recipe that I liked, slightly altered it and voila, that weird photo up there is a close up of the result. Can’t believe the difference in my skin, hair and just general well being since I started making my own stuff. I have to tell you it’s a lot cheaper too! I bought some products from a local business called Heirloom Body Care. They are local, fast and reasonably priced. Just a 10 minute drive from home so I save on postage while supporting a local business. I have some basic ingredients now that when combined with items I already have in the cupboard or can get from the supermarket and health shop will certainly make a fair amount of stuff from what I’ve tried so far. My next big thing will be to try castile soap using olive oil and lye. I need a whole day without interruptions for that one though. And  a little patience while I wait for the soap to cure!

Anyway, better share some love to the sites that have helped me while I travel down this natural skin care regime so here’s some links for you to check out.

Heirloom Body Care – supplies. So far I’ve bought some shea butter, cocoa butter, castor oil, empty bottles, rosemary extract and some stainless steel containers.

Frugal and Thriving – recipe I used then altered slightly. I think next time I’ll tweak it a little again so when I’ve perfected it I’ll post my recipe.

Soap making essentials – some recipes I want to try in the future, especially the whipped shea scrub.

Burkes Backyard – The shampoo recipe which was the first one I tried, think I’ll try this but with the castile soap instead. I used pure soap from the supermarket, which as it turns out isn’t really ‘pure’ after all!

Off now to find a way to increase the lather in body wash, as well as a recipe for face moisturiser using what I’ve got. The body butter is a little heavy for the face..I think if I didn’t use as much beeswax it may be a little better but the little container Zoe and I made last weekend is going to last for ages and I would like to have something before that!

Chow for now…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

in the garden part II