June: mountain, stress and roses.

June has been an interesting month! It feels a bit unreal to be at the end of June and flipping over to the second half of the year. It's been a month of stress and refreshment, change and growth.

I've been trying out a veggie co-op, ordering a mixed box for me and for parents. I think I'll order again but pick more specifically. I kind of like the random mix because it forces me to eat veggies I wouldn't have otherwise, like cauliflower omelette for breakfast, but I don't like being left with dirty potatoes I don't want to eat. It's nice to avoid Coles a bit.

What I have been doing at Coles is buying all the bargains!

 My friends baby turned 1 and they had a very retro birthday party. Not intentionally retro in a Pinterest way, but they literally recreated the kids parties of their childhoods in the truest and humblest way possible. People who don't follow social media trends are so refreshing.

Another blast from the past, church had to move back to our old hall for 3 weeks, which was so small and full. I have a fresh appreciation for the new facilities.

I did cry after church that night. The trouble was I had pushed myself to get through April and May, the Field Days and Women of Truth, but then work piled back on because of the website launch and my tank was empty. I managed to wobble along, because I know that you just have to domino the jobs, one job at a time and the pile will slowly shrink, but it wasn't working so by the 3rd week I had a meltdown situation where I couldn't stop crying. My body was so full of stress it was coming out. So after 2 hours of not being able to stop crying I went home and messaged T who brought me some soup, I slept the afternoon, and then went back to work and discussed workload with my manager.

Some good news, we have a girl gang! An assorted batch to hang out and go on long weekends away together. Julie organised this house at Shoal Bay on the June long weekend. I decided to ask if I could not be on music at church so I could go the whole weekend. JK and I drove and had car maccas.

This is our cute house surrounded by blocks of flats, so close to the beach and Mount Tomaree. The only downside, and it is a big one, is the shower has zero water pressure. I managed to not need to wash my hair and only have 1 shower.

We watched Austenland on DVD, and a netflix romcom. Went to the Country Club around the corner for dinners. Had a pile of maybe 15 blocks of chocolate and other assorted snacks, enough for a youth group weekend at KYCK.

I was still carrying that stress, so I made sure to sit in the sun and read, go to the water, things like that.

Lovely Denise came up from Sydney and we walked up Mount Tomaree together. It is a stunning walk. I was very exhausted afterwards, maybe an arthritis thing or maybe because of the stress. But it was a nice walk and would do it again.

It was so beautiful at sunset on the bay too.

Colleagues raved about baths, so I am trying a weekly bath. S also gave me some bath salts, I do work with such thoughtful people.

My long-awaited rose order arrived! I am full of anxiety about whether I planted and pruned them right. I even dug one of them up twice to check on my planting technique. I'm excitedly waiting for some leaves.

The huge box of veggies has led to a lot of slow cooking, and I've shared some tasty soups with JK.

Taire asked me to paint a watercolour portrait of our friends for a farewell. I decided I needed this creative job and it has been good, it's forced me to get out the paints I bought 6 months ago and finally start using them, playing with them, exploring water colour artists on instagram, things like that.

I think this leaves study is my favourite thing so far.

Yesterday I even went to Tocal to return the work car and took my watercolours and painted the landscape in real life. Yay! I've wanted to do this for ages. Car swapping was a good motivation to go there. I so easily get caught up at home with housework and TV that I miss out on doing things like this. I did however break my pallet, but I think I'll just use ice cream lids now. I just need to abrade them a bit so they don't repel the water.

I cracked all the Tasmanian hazelnuts over 2 sessions. It was painful work, because I can't tolerate sitting on the floor so much anymore. I have just baked my first batch of choc chip hazelnut cookies with them!

I continue my obsession with moving the furniture around. I quite liked this simple one-person spot in the morning sun, but I started to really crave a soft loungey sofa to rest my back, so I swapped in the couch from the garage. It's not very cute, but it is a marshmallow. I am sitting on it right now.

I've decided to try and take some flex days off a bit more regularly, to help with the stress, although I do keep using them for life admin, which I guess helps with the stress probably. And really it's probably better to be walking around doing things than watching TV. On another note I am trying to watch less TV. So anyway, I took a monday off and got my car serviced and my dentist checkup. I treated myself to brunch as well, and looked at shop windows while waiting for the car.

I still have a pile of life admin to do such as change strata company, get quotes from electrician and gutter guard, get a haircut, organise a baby shower, but at least I've done my teeth and my car.

One of my stressful work events was this photoshoot day. I asked for help organising it which was a life saver. I don't know how I would ever have coped if I had to herd the cats of 3 different farms. It's stressful enough briefing the photographers and hoping we get what I need. However a good professional does so much of the heavy lifting. They were amazing at wheedling people to pose and remembering what I had asked for. I kind of enjoyed spending the day outside instead of at my desk, watching them work so hard. But I was so happy when it was over and I could go back to my desk job.

The girl gang went to the fireworks at the Levee. It was so wintery and rainy that day, but it cleared up for the fireworks. It had an odd vibe, I think things at night don't have the magic I want them to, the day events have such a better vibe, but it was basically a good fireworks event.

We marked the 1 year aniversary of Nathans death with soup lunch, some words (including me reading a poem WITHOUT CRYING!) and planting a tree in the garden outside our office.

On Friday, Kate and I went down to Adobe Symposium. This conference was a lot more customer-experience focused than the previous Adobe conferences I've been to. There were still some sessions on the software—Rush probably the most useful to check out—but a lot more on UX, content management and so on. Kind of went over my head. Mixed feelings of inadequacy and inspiration from days like this!

The food hall had a DJ, puppies, VR, a lot of cool technology. Best conference I've been to. I could easily go to this conference alone in future because you don't have to stand around feeling lonely and awkward at any point. Just pat dogs!

Kate is about to leave Tocal and Maitland though, so no more design buddy in my office :( It has been lovely bonding with her for the last year or 2.

And yesterday I did the car return and watercolour painting thing, and then wandered through Lorn and Maitland, joining an older couple from church at a cafe spontaneously. Note to self, just getting out of the house is a great way of connecting with the world. I saw 4 people just going to the shops and cafes.

Then my housemate moved out, and now I live alone again. I have been rather looking forward to it. She is lovely but I am happy to have my own calm house to myself again.

Plus I now have a whole room for music!

May: hump month!

To be honest I don't feel like blogging about May, I know it was a big month and I'm still tired! But here I go anyway.

The first week of may was setting up this tent for the Tocal Field Days. This is the before shot, early in the week, and the event started on Friday. It has 10 different areas, some of which are designated to other groups but most of it is the college, so me and a few colleagues did most of the setting up in here over 3 days. The lowlights of that job were: 

• getting a big wooden hut moved which required a forklift and 3 people to move. 
• planning to use a large TV to show videos but the remote was lost in the packup last year so it was useless. My rage had no words.
• ordering turf floor in the bookshop and having to re-lay and tape it ourselves because they did such a sloppy half-job.
• The shirts we ordered weeks before weren't done til the last minute despite pushing and pushing them.

The 3 days event went really well though. This is the sort of stuff we put in it.

We didn't roster staff as much this year, we broke people into teams and left it to teams to figure out who was needed when, and thankfully we had enough people to work all the areas all the weekend. The weather was a bit dodgy, it rained heavily on Saturday morning, so Sunday was our biggest day. We counted almost 900 people through our VR goggle activity which was very successful in a lot of measures. Steph and myself just need to work out how to make the set up run more smoothly next year, because that was the pain point for both of us as organisers. We were exhausted before the event began so we will not be repeating the most stressful jobs next year.

I bought this kokodama monstera for a treat for myself (I made a nice macrame holder for it, its in progress on the right of this photo).

I also bought this bag that grows mushrooms!

And a $10 posy from Four Acre Farm. That was my haul from the event. Nice things.

Mum had a lump biopsy the Thursday before the event, and was discovered to have breast cancer. I don't know why I didn't much shock or surprise about this, maybe it was the busyness of the week. Maybe my emotions went in other directions, as I poured so much rage into the missing TV remote instead of cancer.

A week later mum's CT scan showed that there is no spreading of the cancer, which is good. Mum and Dad had a holiday to Canada planned for the end of May and were still hoping to go, starting treatment when they got back, but then the oncologist appointment scuttled that, and that's when I really got upset. Again, emotions going in other directions. I was visiting JK when mum rang up about that and I cried. So mum's first chemo was Thursday 30 May, right when they should have been starting their jaunt at Niagara Falls. But being treated for cancer is for the best.

It's coming up to the 1 year anniversary of Nathan's death, and this week his wife S decided to get onto it and she has decided to have a flowering gum planted in the garden outside our office and have some soup and damper and has asked me to read a poem. That will be on 24 June, a year and a week after he died. Anyway enough about cancer.

I got better deals on my electricity, gas and internet when I shopped around for a new contract. I ended up staying with my existing supplier but got a heaps better discount for attempting to leave. That's how it goes.

Friday park walks are back on, and its just me and Cass, the OG park walkers. No prams, just like the old days. So we can walk and jog and talk. It's been really lovely. I know I need a weekly walk and talk with a friend. And we talk about all the things.

We spotted this wild bee nest! 

The next day I actually found another wild bee nest in a tree beside a footpath as I was walking from my house to Maitland for the Olive Tree Markets. I then met H from Tocal there for lunch and a bit of browsing. I bought a cup, I think that was all.

Dad organised a game of croquet on a Sunday morning. It was lovely.

My home group leaders had a 40th Birthday party themed Spicks and Specks. It was delightful to hang out in their backyard eating cheese cob dip and getting competitive.

And I helped with the social club morning tea for cancer at work. I won a bottle of honey mead!

The highlight of my month has been moving furniture around. It started when I had to shift all the furniture out of my back room to make space for music practice for Women of Truth (WOT). I loved how an empty room looked so different. A month later I switched new furniture in (after WOT all done). I also had a realisation about the front room. I don't actually need to have my TV plugged in to the antennae because I can stream everything, so I rearranged the living room as well, the TV is on the other side of the room and it works so much better! I have small rooms so its a challenge to have furniture not blocking doorways.

Women of Truth music went well. There was a Saturday night practice with the whole band, and thankfully our drummer who had dropped out with performance anxiety (she is very young and very new) rejoined the band so we had a nice big sound. I made soup for the team before we practiced. I've been upping my hospitality game recently due to soup season. It's so easy to do tasty, healthy, gluten free soups. Anyway the band came together really well and at the end of the month we had the conference and it all went pretty perfectly. I didn't have any joy in it, but its done and done well.

I saw Aladdin with church people and it is amazing.

I gave myself 3 days off work this month. I got a bit sick at one point and stayed in bed, and then also took some long weekends to just rest after TFD and WOT. I did things like read my bible and the book Enjoying God over breakfast in a cafe, did gardening, had a Dr appointment, and had parents over for lunch. Days off are the best.

I have struggled at work this month. After TFD I was kind of wrecked and had an empty tank. Having days off regularly is refreshing but then also makes it hard to get back into the flow of work. I've been making mistakes which is quite unusual. And I finished the month with so much work coming up in June that I'm a bit overwhelmed. But I've also realised that I put a lot of pressure on myself to do things perfectly and not make any mistakes. TFD and WOT are big jobs and anxiety is going to be part of them, but my anxiety about doing them perfectly is a bit too much.

Health update: I suspect I have rheumatoid arthritis, so I got a blood test, and the result was I am positive for rheumatoid factor. Which means maybe or probably? Anyway now I'm waiting to see a rheumatologist in September. I get a very tired back, sometimes very sore, sometimes it wakes me up at night. Playing the cello and sometimes the piano sometimes makes my hands sore. It's not terrible but it is noticeable.

On Wednesday night I had 2 young women from church over for soup and rummikub. Just thought it would be nice to build some relationships with younger women. Look at me with all the hospitality! So godly.

Yesterday I did Friday park walk on my own, but it was worth it because the sun was warm and nice, and I saw a cute tiny dog. Yorky cross Chihuahua.

I shall finish with the 7 lemons on my potted lemon tree starting to turn yellow. In spring I shall have lemons!

I think I've got over the worst and busiest months of the year, I knew April and May would be tough and they were, and now they are done, and hopefully as I recover my energy and life slows down I can enjoy the second half of the year more.