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.