One year on. Brooke Fraser and Sydney friends.

Last week was the one year point, since I left Sydney.

Last year I bought tickets to see Brooke Fraser with Bec, and the Sydney show was 18 March which was a Wednesday. Not convenient for living outside Sydney, so I took 3 days of leave and spend two nights with Bec staying in her new cabin, and had a big efficient visit.

So on Wednesday I packed and drove down in the morning. I felt sad instead of happy and anticipaty, I actually cried at bible study the night before. I don't know why I'm still a bit up and down. Anyway, I got a great park at Coogee beach at about 10:30 and had a nice swim in the ladies pool.

Then I went to the dentist. My teeth are great!

Then I went to visit K and her two little girls for lunch. Then I went to the Ortho for a quick retainer check. My teeth are great! So that's all set for another year.

Then I got my annual haircut (including wash and blow dry for $45) and I am very pleased with it. Then I had a smoothie and got some Asian sauce at pacific square. Then I drove to Hurstville where Bec lives. I thought it was just normal awful traffic but there was an accident. Then we went to Newtown and had Thai in a pub and gelato and saw Brooke Fraser. I like the old sound, none of the new songs sound like a part of my life the way the old ones do, but her voice and songwriting is always amazing and she did some old ones in a new way which I enjoyed and we got to sing along to Shadowfeet and CS Lewis Song. And she has the most adorable stage persona. She announced she is pregnant which was a pretty big moment. We saw many friends in the crowd.

On Thursday, Bec and I did work/art in the cabin, then when out for lunch, then napped.

Then we cleaned the worm farm she was giving me, then we walked to Hurstville station and got a train to the city. It was a happy Asian chicken dinner with friends, absolutely wonderful. I'm counting that as a birthday dinner a week early. Bec recorded Elsie and I explaining If You Are The One to her on her phone and made a Jessie video out of it, which I LOVE. Walked over to darling harbour water park, then back to Dixon street for n2 gelato. I had baklava flavour.

A Jelssievision tutorial IYATO from Bec Jee on Vimeo.

On Friday I dropped my plan to go to ikea, and went straight to the beach to have brunch and a swim in the ladies pool with JB, which flowed on to a swim and then lunch with Becky. It was a stunning day.

I was so lucky to live in that area. I left at about 2:20pm and got to maitland before 5, the traffic was a little bit hairy but it was at least moving, I beat the peak.

On Saturday I slept in, and then made an exciting trip to Bunnings to return a garden fork I bought last week and buy worms and stuff. Worms cost $50! Golly. But I'm pretty delighted to finally be able to process compost to feed my garden. I started it off with most of a rockmelon that went soft and some corn husk and the paper from Percy's cage.

I moved Maddie's solar powered fairy lights from the washing line to the fence, with some nifty wire bits of my own invention. I can see them from my bed at night. You can't have too many fairy lights I say.

I have been rejoicing over the sprouting of the pea and sweet pea seeds I planted last week! There are only about 3, but I got some bamboo stakes while I was at Bunnings and I've already hammered some into the ground to start a trellis, even though they still are just wee baby sprouts and can't hang on to anything yet. I am taking great delight in my garden.

Garden!

Bit to catch up on.

JK and I haven't done enough swimming this summer so the weekend before last we swam at the baths (the ocean was too dangerous and we got dumped even in the pool!) on Saturday morning.

Then I went to Steggles factory and stocked up the freezer, with a bonus 1kg of satay wings.

Then I did Jillian. Then I was tired. However, I puddled my way through the decluttering of my art cupboard (unpacked some bags that haven't been opened since I moved 1 year ago, found useful things like head torch and phone chargers, threw out useless things like OLD phone chargers). Did cello practice and a facebook drawing. Made 2 jars of brownie mix. Washed.

On Sunday I went to Maitland Park to use my scooter on the new path. It was a cool, pleasant morning. Then I checked out Taste festival, held in maitland mall and the first look at the mall revamp without construction fencing. Would have been more fun with a friend but didn't have the bothers to organise anything.

I bought 1 satay chicken skewer, 1 bottle ginger beer #singlelyf. I also bought tea for me and friends. I also browsed handbags, now I want a new handbag (a brown colorado one to match my brown shoes) but I've got some nice bags, bought on holidays and full of happy memories, and bags last for a long time. Excellent CPW. So I shall be minimalist and keep enjoying the bags I have. In the afternoon, more cello practice, another drawing, an episode of POI with M. Church, church dinner, church dinner washup, walk home.

The comments on my Sunday drawing, which was a monster, were hilarious. A monster stumped me for a while. I tried to draw a comical monster with eyes on stalks and 2 heads and stuff, it was awful. So I thought back to what scared me as a kid: the big bad banksia men from snugglepot and cuddlepie. But not exactly them, my childhood scary version of them, and it's amazing how well it works, a hairy thing with multiple sneaky eyes and multiple toothy mouths. Hair, teeth and eyes. It creeped people out.

Last week I joined in a 2 day workshop called Sharing Our Future Together. There were several useful things.

1. we went through different "tools" like the "circles of Control, Influence and Concern", a gratitude exercise, some visualisation, saying Could instead of Should.
2. we also worked on our own goals, and workshopped how to break them down into SMART goals, swapped phone numbers to check up on each other later.
3. I felt really refreshed afterwards. I really noticed the difference on Tuesday at bible study compared to the week before. I had the energy to laugh, let alone contribute.

I notice I don't have as much trouble "making time for me" as all the wives and mums I work with. It is a normal part of my life, but a guilt-laden issue for a lot of them apparently. Yay for #singlelyf. I also think that being a Christian makes a lot of good things happen regularly. If you go to church, you get a weekly reminder that the world doesn't rely on you. God runs it, so it's OK to let go of it for some rest. And we sing and pray our gratitude. So writing down 3 things I am grateful for didn't blow my mind. I was also pleasantly surprised at how confident I could be among a group of colleagues like that. One of the things was not saying "umm" and I can talk in front of a group of people I didn't know and people higher up in my department without saying umm once.

One surprising thing was the visualisation. I have my doubts about the "power" of it, but for the first time I actually got into it and enjoyed it. I wasn't telling my mind to shut up and relax, I just got completely absorbed in designing an imaginary mountain library, adding lovely things to it, going outside and breathing the mountain air, eating toasted pear and raspberry bread, and it was delightful. It was like when you are having a fun dream and you start to wake up but you don't want to leave the dream so you start making it up so that it keeps going.

I am trying to keep the positivity going and I've got my SMART goal underway.

So then this last weekend I had a productive, frugal and enjoyable shopping trip to Kotara with one of my sisters, dug up my grass for a garden, added compost from my parents, my housemate did some hospitality, I did a bit of Jillian, it was pretty quiet. The most exciting thing is the gardening.

Equanimity. Garden. Hospitality.

Last Saturday I went out to the Putty Road where a sister was house sitting. We went for a walk near this Aboriginal cave painting Baiame.

It was a long way away and there are some interesting farming landscapes and open cut mines in the area. So it was a nice day trip.

I’ve got a normal life now. No upheavals looming. 12 months of transition is coming to an end, it’ll just be that week-in week-out life again. Normal life means sometimes being serene, grateful and contented, and sometimes being flat, ranty and irked. In particular I’m trying to catch myself when I’m mentally ranting and pray about it, because I don’t like that feeling of obsessing over a negative issue. I had a funny lightbulb moment a few weeks ago, I was looking at another failed attempt at daily bible reading and prayer, ie, the new years resolution that didn’t last, and thinking “I really should pray for so much stuff, but whats the point, I never maintain he habit, It’s doomed to failure, there’s no point trying to pray, I FAIL”. And then I realised, what is prayer for? Asking a loving and powerful Father God for help. It is SO hard to see things through the grace lens not the works lens. So I’m giving it a go. I think. I haven’t noticed a dramatic change, I don’t have a daily habit now, but I think I’m praying about things a bit more.

Percy after he stuck his head under the shower

I think the change in season will be good.

Since I made the decision to buy a laptop instead of a garden, I feel a bit sad that I won’t have a garden. Because March is when you plant peas and sweet peas, and that’s the one thing I want to grow. It’s on my home-owner yard-owner bucket list. They are something I know I can grow, they grow fast and it’s satisfying, and I like to eat peas and pick sweet pea flowers. So, I have decided that I’m not going to wait for the money to build a proper raised garden bed, I’m just going to kill a patch of lawn, dig in some compost or something, and plant some seeds. It’ll all be dodgy and temporary but it will be something to enjoy. Here are some BEFORE photos for the record. Watch this space.

Maddie and I invited Eddie over for dinner. This is lasagna in my new baking dish, we ate at my new table. 3 is the number of proper chair and matching plates we have.

I put mint and ice in glasses! How classy is that.

Feeling good about.

Cello.

I'm halfway through my second term of lessons, and I am making pretty good progress. My teacher always says I'm doing well. I'm ahead of the average! I'm pretty impatient though, I want cello to be easy like piano is. So I've had varying levels of satisfaction in my progress. The first couple of lessons were magic, because I WAS PLAYING THE CELLO! And then I realised how hard it was, my hand gets tired of holding the bow, my fingers hurt from the strings, I was playing pretty boring songs. So I just tried to keep practicing consistently, and fortunately because I practiced I got to progress through the boring pieces quickly. During the christmas holidays I mostly had a break. The good thing about that was, I was able to break the habit I had of putting my thumb on the sharpest part of the bow, which hurt. I couldn't change my habit while practicing, but taking a break for a few weeks made me stop it, and then I started again with a better thumb position.

My second term has been exciting. I've been working on bending my elbow, and finally I feel like I'm bowing properly and gracefully. My left hand fingers are stronger so I can play in tune more easily. I am now playing on all four strings and with all four fingers, and this means I'm playing a few pieces of REAL music, a Bach minuet and a Purcell thing. I also like the Suzuki exercises. So I actually enjoy what I'm playing and feel like I'm playing reasonably proficiently. I like that I get a new song and I'm completely awkward at first, but by the end of the week I'm smooth.

Some dumplings in Newcastle.

Some roses I saw last night.

Housemate.

No downsides to this. It's nice. It's easy. She's busy and quiet. She bought us a new fridge.

Work.

I am out of limbo land and a proper permanent employee! I am very grateful for that. This week I've been able to upload a pile of books to various stores, so that's satisfying. My next goal is to work on promoting. Some kind of promotion pack to send to authors to help them get the word out.

We had a social excursion to the chicken farm, which is being turned into free-range eggs. This is a big empty shed with foundations.

This is a shed being set up with grating and nest boxes.

This is the free range area being fenced.

Snow peas.

I decided I need to eat more veg, so I now buy a bag of snow peas every week. They are nice enough to eat without dip, and they don't need to be cut. I just wash them and eat them out of the bag and give all the stalks to Percy. I think I prefer them to banana actually. A lot more expensive though. Per kilo. But maybe you pay for a lot of heavy skin with banana that you don't eat.

Singleness.

I feel like I'm doing good stuff encouraging single women. The ones who say that they feel a bit weird to be going against culture and not hating singleness, I endorse their position, and the ones who are trying to be married and doing online dating, I've tried an online dating website once so I can identify with that. I don't want to change people to all be like me, I know some people just want marriage and that is a good desire and a good thing to pursue if you can. But I do want to see less stigma and pity and self-pity. And just be realistic and open about it, and keep it in perspective.

Mac.

I have achieved a personal goal, bought a Mac! In anticipation of getting the Internet. Means I haven't saved anything towards my mortgage since I moved in; I first repaid my parents then bought a table then this laptop. I'm going to plug away and save for a while now, then make my next purchase which could be a keyboard.

If you have a 9am appointment at the apple store, you see them through the glass having a pow wow. Then at 8.58 they spread around the store and stare at the customers waiting outside staring in. Then at exactly 9am, the doors slide open and they give a round of applause to us as we walk awkwardly in.

Worklife.

I'm currently on a temporary contract that ends on 28th Feb. The ongoing position was advertised at the end of last year, and I applied for it, and had my interview today, and really it has felt like the thing I've been building towards since I left Sydney. It's almost a year since I left. The 1 year mark will hopefully coincide with a job offer, and then I can finally feel like I'm properly here. I've always been thinking "in case I don't get the job" and "if I have to move". I have a pile of moving boxes in the garage to remind me. But at the same time I've just got on with my life, bought a house, got a housemate, and basically been settling down. But every decision has had the "if I don't get the job" scenario alongside it.

So the interview is done, and I'm happy with how it went. I didn't blow it, there's nothing I'm kicking myself about. I was prepared, I felt confident, sounded articulate, I think my answers were well considered, and I tried to not talk about already working there but refered to MM experience a lot. Because I felt like that was an opportunity, to present myself and my experience formally so they would have a better idea of me as a package. It was a danger that I'd take for granted that they know me and leave out the things you normally present, but I think I covered it well. It has been 8 years or so since my last job interviews and I guess I'm more mature and confident now and I have more experience to talk about. Therefor I would say it was my best job interview ever.

My flowers this month (roses because $10 at markets and valentine appropriate):

As you can see I don't mind a bit o' doily.

In other life news:

The working week has a rhythm. Monday has a few meetings, which load me up with work. Then I spend the rest of the week trying to follow through. Most of my work and personal activities are at the start of the week so I feel weary and stressed on Monday about everything I have to do, Wednesday is well and truly hump day, and TGIF on Friday. I didn't used to have such a defined rhythm, it was all much of a muchness in Sydney and at MM, or MM had a quarterly cycle really, but now I fit the work week cliche.

I try and get to work at 8am usually, so that I have enough time after work before dinner to do a drawing (before it gets dark) or do Jillian (so I don't have any excuse of being hungry) or go to my cello lesson. Friday is a day I don't have to do anything other than work, so I don't have to get up and to work as early, and I might have a little treat like a hot cross bun and a cup of tea with my breakfast, before I go to work. 

Monday: Jillian, Life course

Tuesday: Drawing, bible study

Wednesday: Jillian

Thursday: Cello lesson, drawing

Friday: Drawing

I try and fit cello practice in on most days. Sometimes I do food shopping or something else instead of drawing. I do 3 or 4 drawings a week usually.

I've got a housemate. It is working out well so far. It's different than in the past, where we shared rent. It's a bit different that its my house and she pays me, but I'm trying to keep it even and not be the boss of the house. On the plus side, it's different because it is bigger, so there is less sharing really. Individual bathrooms. 2 TVs. And in terms of her personality and lifestyle, she is quiet and busy, which is what I like. She isn't in and out in a chaotic dramatic way, and she isn't an introvert who wants to stay at home all the time. She is out and about a lot, and nice to be around when she is home.

The fun highlight has been I went to another markets on the weekend! The Sacred Tree markets in Branxton, a small boring town up the valley. They are small but good quality markets. Good food, cheap flowers, the usual trendy trinkets. I spend all my money on food. I went with Taire from Nail and Twine photography who is having a stall there next month http://www.nailandtwine.com.au/, and we saw another aqauintance of ours painting faces, she does amazing work, only $5. Frozen snowflakes, pansies, completely beautiful. You can see the number of brushes and things she has.

I have also enjoyed when I take Percy to work. Sometimes he is a bit bothersome if he really wants a scratch and just annoys my hand to get one.

 But by and large he either hangs out in his cage quietly or sits on his branch chortling.

The most adorable thing is that he tries to scratch his own head for pleasure. He holds his foot up and slowly rotates his head against it. He yawns when he is relaxed.

Boring is nice.

Nothing particularly wonderful to blog about lately, I've had a quiet February so far. Big things are afoot though, I'm expecting my job interview next week. And a housemate is moving stuff in on the weekend.

Photo of the teapot lid I broke and repaired,

the teacup lid I broke and repaired,

the teapot I found for my colleague, which he bought, it is cool,

the flowers I bought myself.

My house finally has a table!

Other than that, I'm doing Jillian regularly which is good, cello lessons have restarted, I've managed a few drawings each week, went back to bible study. These are the main things I try and fit into my life.