Before........

OMG!!! This is the ACTUAL 'before' photo of my wardrobe. It looks more like the 'fake' one that I posted last night than I realised.

Please note yesterday's clothes dumped on the floor, as I have no coat hangers to hang them up. And that mess in the top left hand corner is my cardigans and jumpers oh so carefully strewn on the shelf. And the bottom right is just more clothes that I have no hangers/room for hanging on the side of the baskets to keep them off the floor when the cleaner comes to vacuum.

Oh dear.

I'm not starting right now though.

I'm not procrastinating, I'm actually busy. I have some work to do for the very important All Things Kids Market first. The wardrobe is a priority, but it may just have to get done in stages.

There's just too much stuff!!!

I have heard these words come out of my mouth far too often these days.

I am sick and tired of the kids not knowing where to find stuff. And it's not that the place is a mess, or that its not well organised - there's just SO MUCH of it!!! I was saying it to the kids last week that we HAVE to go through all of their stuff and clear it out.

There were tears.

And I had to tell then that it's my fault.

I am the one who buys most of this stuff.

I am the one who brings it into the house.

I am the one who doesn't make time to go through it often enough.

I am the adult, and I have to take responsibility.

Then I look in my wardrobe.

We are lucky enough to have a walk-in wardrobe EACH. And that doesn't mean that Cal's stuff is n one room and mine is in another - there are 2 WIRs in our bedroom. Each one is full-sized and mine looks something like this:

I will try and remember to take an ACTUAL picture of my wardrobe (it's actually not this bad) tomorrow. The point I'm trying to make is that the pledge I made to myself last year of "one in/one out" hasn't held true. I can barely hang anything up. There's just no room. Plus, we have run out of coat hangers, and I really don't want to buy any more.

The girl's wardrobes are not dissimilar (well more Bailey's than Ardyn's). With the girls still growing, their wardrobes usually hold more than one size, and as we travel to different climates quite regularly, clothes for different seasons. Right now, they are a mess.

And truth be told, it's been so long since I've gone through the clothes they've outgrown (there are more in garbage bags in the bottom of the spare room cupboard) .................... oh dear, I just don't want to think about it.

So I have made a promise to myself that I have to go through these wardrobes. I HAVE TO. It's got to the point (like the kids' toys) that I have no idea what's there.

One at a time. But where to start.

Tomorrow, deep breath, get on with it.

My wardrobe first.

I have to be ruthless.

I have to be honest with myself and do this with no emotion.

If it needs mending, is the wrong size, looks crap, I always skim past it - GONE!!!!!!

So first thing in the morning I stock up on garbage bags. Toss and donate. Ruthless.

Then Bailey's.

I would love a wardrobe like this

Seriously? Who wouldn't? But at the moment, I would settle for something that I can actually hang a piece of clothing in, and actually see what I've got.

I will try and get 'before' and 'afters' for you. Maybe even a really scary 'during'.

Are you doing any spring cleaning these school holidays?

Find Your Tribe

Three little words, but three extremely important words.
I read these words today, and they spoke to me.

These days I often think (and admittedly worry) about my girls making deep friendships. Maybe not now, but in the future. I completely understand that the friends they make now may not be their friends forever, but I hope that they find some loving friends who they can count on when they need them. That they find their tribe. We all need a tribe of like-minded people who accept us for the good and the bad.

I remember primary school. I loved my friends and I did anything for them. That's the type of person I am. Ardyn is only 6, but has formed what she thinks are deep friendships, and I would me more than happy if these friendships stayed deep and lasted the distance. She has some beautiful friends, and they have some wonderful parents. Life is easier if you have a tribe.

Life as a kid should be easy. Having a tribe makes it easier.

I was lucky enough in Year 4 to meet a girl who I would come to consider my bestest of friends. I had other friends, but she was my tribe. I cry now as I remember our friendship. It was so special to me. She made my life good, and I could count on her when I needed her. And she could count on me. I would do anything for her. And I still would if I knew where she was.

We lost touch. It was no fault of ours, it was the adults in our lives. Circumstance. We tried to keep in touch, but there were oceans between us.

As an adult, looking back, I still wish that there was more that I could have done. But I was just a kid. We both were. As an adult I know the signs, as a kid.....I had no idea.

Heather came to our school at the end of Year 4. She had a brother Scott, and a mum and dad. Mum was American and dad was Canadian (or perhaps the other way around). We clicked very quickly. We were inseparable.

She was scruffy. We were both tom boys. We were both scruffy. We climbed trees. We rode bikes. We joked and laughed. I remember how funny she was. She was a prankster, and loved to laugh. We were pretty happy kids, living the life that kids should live.

I didn't understand what it meant when her mum moved out. I didn't understand what it meant that she lived in a home with other ladies, and that Scott and Heather visited her on the weekends. There was talk of court dates. I didn't understand that either.

I didn't understand why her dad was always drinking beer/scotch and sleeping on the couch (which was actually a double bed in the lounge room).
I didn't understand what it meant when in Year 5 she said that "I tried to mend my dad's pants, and he didn't like how I did it. So he banged my head into the sewing machine."
I didn't understand what it meant when in Year 6 she was late for the State Cross Ball Championships and she said "Sorry. I was making my vegemite sandwich for lunch and dad doesn't like it, so he rubbed it in my face. I had to go and wash and change again."

I'm now an adult, and I now understand. Why didn't I tell my parents. They would have understood. They would have done something.

We went to different high schools, but that didn't matter as we lived close enough to still see each other out of school. We spent the weekends together when she wasn't at her mum's, and then one Sunday she didn't turn up. I tried to call her all day and no one answered. I had no idea what was going on. I was so worried.

She called late that night. I thought she was joking when she said "Dad killed mum this morning. I'm at a foster home." Such a prankster - but it wasn't a prank.
Even now, I can't contemplate it. There is so much more that we went through together, but that's neither here nor there. The most important thing to me at that time was that she left.

After a stint in foster care, she and her brother were shipped off to Arizona to live with family. We kept in touch, she came back (yay!), and was then shipped off to Canada (boo!). This time for good.

This was the first time my heart broke over a lost friendship. I still cry for her. For her lost childhood. But it shows you how strong the call of the tribe can be. It also shows you how when I invest in a freindship, I invest in a friendship. I take my tribe very seriously.

Oh God I would love to know where she is.

Years later, I think I was in my late 20s, she came knocking on our door. Back in Australia. She had studied Criminology. I had studied Forensics. We were very similar people. We started talking about how if life events had sculpted who we were in a similar way. We had planned to delve more into that in the future.

We only saw each other once or twice after that. I have no idea what happened. By my mid-20s I had learned to block certain aspects of friendship and emotion out. I looked after me. Maybe I had blocked out the emotion I had for her. The LOVE I had for her (and still do). It's a shame if that's what I did. How horrible of me.

Is this why I take friendship so seriously? Is this why I find myself in search of a new tribe? I don't want to make the same mistake again, and possibly miss the signs. Sitting here now, it explains a lot.

There's more, but this is enough for now. It's a lot of words, and I have cried enough.

If only Heather read this (I could only hope for such a dream), and contacted me. I wish. I wish. I only wish that wherever she is she is well. And happy, and laughing, and cracking jokes and pulling pranks.

Find your tribe. And do everything to keep it.
K xx

Thankful Thought Thursday

Today I am thankful for Reverse Garbage .

If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have this little gem.

I have no idea where she is going to live in our house, I am trying to remove red out of our furnishings, but she makes me smile whenever I look at her.

Thankful Thought Thursday

Today I am EXREMELY thankful to the staff at the Ballarat Base Hospital Oncology and Radiation Oncology Departments for saving my mum's life. 


Words can not express my gratitude.

K xx

How the hell do they do it???

I would love to be able to term myself  "Blogger". I often wonder how 'real' Bloggers find time to blog?

I have said before that I often come up with clever, witty posts in my head, I edit them and rewrite them while they are up there, and then they just disappear. Forgotten. By teh time I get to sit at my computer, they are gone. Or something else comes up (usually a child wanting something) and it gets put further and further on the back burner.

And who would read about my crap anyway?? I can see the benefit for friends and family who live interstate so that thay can keep up-to-date with what's going on - but then again I have to update the bloody thing for them to be able to read it.

I need Bill Gates to develop some program that will turn my thoughts into posts. They can do it with the spoken word, surely it's just a matter of time before they can do it with my thoughts.

I joined a Blogging Community in the hope to connect with other Bloggers, and I can't even remember the last time that I logged into that site. Even though there is a bookmark for it on my toolbar.

I would like to say that life gets in the way, but I'm not sure that it actually does.

I remember a couple of years ago there were discussions being thrown around the art/craft forums about finding time to be creative. Most of the creative types mentioned that they just don't do the chores that we complain about doing. That's one way, but I'm already a lazy cow and don't do half of them. I have a cleaner so that I don't have to think about cleaning toilets and showers. I can't be bothered hanging clothes out, so I use my dryer - so much so that I'm sure there is a massive hole in the atmosphere over my house. I don't iron. I enjoy cooking, but regularly find myself ordering pizzas for dinner. I enjoy watching Grey's Anatomy reruns, and I love reading all about other people's lives on their blogs.


I'm hopeless.

C'mon, I'm sure there are many people who would enjoy watching these beautiful people rather than hanging clothes on the line.

K xx

9/11/2001

That night is imprinted on my memory.

Cal and I had been arguing (just for something different), but I have no idea what about. I was working in the Banking and Finance Industry back then, and had to be up at about 4:30am. We were hosting a Briefing for Financial Advisers and other members of the industry the next morning, and I had to be at the Grand Hyatt Melbourne by 6am, so I really should have gone to bed early. But I was being stubborn.

I remember lying on one of the recliners and started dozing off. He was watching "3 Kings" on DVD, and I had no interest. I was being stubborn.

I finally got up and decided it was time to go to bed.
Not long later, I must have just dozed off, he came in and told me to turn the TV on. I was still pretty much asleep, but still turned the TV on. Then I got angry, as I thought that he had woken me to show me a rerun of "Die Hard". Seriously.

Then he told me, "This is happening RIGHT NOW. In New York. Terrorists have taken control of planes and playing them into buildings." I couldn't believe that those words were coming out of his mouth. What the fuck was going on?!?!?!?!?

We started wracking our brains to work out if we had any friends or family over there.......no, none. Well none that we could think of at that moment. Then I realised that we had a couple of our executives over there. Where were they? What was their itinerary??? I couldn't remember. So I called my direct boss at about 2am and we worked out that they should be out of harm's way.

But what about the thousands of people in this world who had those same thoughts, but answered....yes. What about them???? Those poor people. Around the world. So sad.

I couldn't get to sleep. I sat up glued to the television. I watched the second tower get hit. The people on the floors above the crash sites jumping. The loss. The buildings crumbling. The devastation. The desperation on people's faces. The tears.

Oh the tears.
I shed so many tears that night, and I shed a near equal amount now as I relive it.
I have deliberately stayed away from any coverage on TV, as I just don't want to see the images. Ten years of the images is enough for me.

I didn't want to go to sleep. I was scared at what would face me when I woke up. Would I even wake up???? What other atrocities would I see?

The next day was a haze. My colleague had gone to bed early, hadn't turned on a radio, and didn't know anything about it. Half of our guests didn't turn up. Financial markets were in turmoil. The world was in turmoil.
Our office was a buzz. Phones and emails madly flying everywhere. Everyone checking on friends and colleagues who work in the financial industry, who were visiting New York.......people just contacting their loved ones to tell them that they love them.

I don't remember much else from the day. The images from the night were imprinted to deeply on my brain that there was no room for any new information.

It was a terrible day. It was so sad. I cried.
I cry.

To all who lost their lives on that terrible day, RIP. You didn't deserve to die like that.
To all of those who did their best to help, you are heroes.

I don't know what else to say.
Just love your families. Hug your children. Embrace your community. Tell those you love that you love them.
Live every day as if it's your last.

Thankful Thought Thursday

Today I am thankful for teachers, nurses, firefighters, paramedics and all of the overworked, underpaid and most important members of our society.

We entrust our children, our lives and our communities to these people, and they deserve to be treated accordingly.

Thankful Thought Thursday

I was just reading an article on Mamamia about Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, who left her 3 and 5 year old sons so that she could move overseas and pursue her career. The thought of leaving your child is something that I could never imagine. And I guess we have a societal view that mothers just couldn't leave their kids, that it's more of a dad thing. I mean, how could you leave someone who was literally a part of you for 9 months????

Anyway, that got me thinking, and like I do, it got me off on a tangent. That tangent found me landing on the thoughts of parental responsibilities, and what we do for our kids. And also how we judge other parents so quickly for what they do or don't do.

Today Bailey's preschool hosted a Father's Day breakfast for  - well - the dads. Cal told her that he would take the morning off to come and spend it with her. She was so excited, and has been looking forward to it for weeks.
Then the financial market started shitting itself.

Given what's been happening in the last few weeks, I thought that there may have been a possibility that he wouldn't make it. But true to form, being the amazing dad that he is, even though they are a little under the pump, he took the morning off to spend it having breakfast and playing games with Bailey and her friends, and their dads.

But not all of the dads were there. :(
I try not to judge, but what sort of a father can't take a couple of hours off and hang out with their preschooler? It's bloody hard not to judge, but I have a really hard time not judging. How heartbreaking for these kids?!?! Shouldn't a parent - mother or father - be willing to give up a little bit of their time for their kids?
Kids don't need grand gestures, they need some time and love.

Which gets me to what I'm thankful for.
Basically, Cal.
Specifically in this week, as we head towards Father's Day, Cal as a father. My girls really couldn't ask for a better dad. He is there for them in whatever aspect they need. They have his time and his love and I am grateful for such a wonderful, loving father for my kids.

They don't yet know how lucky they are, but they will, and when they do, they will be thankful too.
xx