Oh good lord. I looked at the date today on my phone and realised that I started at the Evil Empire 19 years ago today.
NINETEEN YEARS!
Boy doesn’t that make me sound like a sad old Larry No-Career! Which may be the case, but I swear I’ve done many different things over the time, it just happens they were all in this one company. And department. Ahem. Even the 11 straight years supporting the-system-that-just-won’t-die are excused because six and a half of those were in London and I dismiss that time with an airy wave and the comment that “it suited me to stay in London so my career wasn’t my main focus.” Has my career ever been my main focus? Ahem-hem… oh look, what’s that over there?
Far more interesting though is how much closer I am to the big 2-0. See, at fifteen years I got 3 month’s long service leave (which I still haven’t taken) and then because I [am so ancient] started so long ago, when I get to 20 years I get another 3 months. I thought the time would be delayed a few years because I’m now part time, but it turns out it still happens around the 20 year mark, the amount is just pro-rataed. (The only thing that has affected it was the 3 month’s unpaid leave I took at the end of 2001 before moving permanently to London, which shifted the date three months. I thought my maternity leave would do the same but not according to SAP, and you don’t argue with SAP.)
… So this means that as of 24th April 2013, I’ll have a total of 994 hours of paid leave up my sleeve. At my current rate of 0.6, or 3 days a week, that’s almost 41 and a half weeks of leave. If I can wrangle it as 0.5 instead (there’s an option to have it paid at half-pay, but that could mean 0.3 for me) then it’s almost 50 weeks. As of now I am 68 weeks away from at least nine and a half months of paid leave. Hmm, I guess I won’t be looking for a role outside the organisation for a while yet!
I have no idea if I’ll take the time straight away, or what I’ll do with it. Maybe I’ll just hang on to it just in case. Mind you, that’s why I haven’t taken the 15-year leave yet either. There’s a chance Dave will be offered a role overseas in a year or so, maybe in Singapore, or perhaps we’ll go back to London for a while. It would come in really useful for then. Or maybe I’ll just take a year off at a random point and use the time to potter around at home.
Either way, I’ve got long enough to weigh up my options. One thing I do know is I’m not going to save it up to go with the 25-year entitlement! That would be just too sad.
Oh, and how do I know the date so accurately? Well, there’s an option within our SAP system to see your leave entitlements as at a particular date, so I spent a an hour or so this afternoon putting in different dates to see when exactly it ticked over. Yep, my 19th anniversary of starting was a very productive day. They are lucky to have me, indeed.
So it’s another new year. 2012! The year of the London Olympics and possibly the end of the world. So far it’s been pretty good. We painted our laundry (I’m aware I still need to tell you about the bedroom reno!) and moved the freezer under the bench (which necessitated cutting a bit out of the supporting lip so it would fit) and it looks great, much brighter and less claustrophobic with the freezer moved. We still need to put up shelves but it’s looking really good.
Yesterday I caught up with my good friend Tam, who’s down from Brisbane for a couple of weeks. I haven’t actually seen her since we got married, almost three years ago, so it was nice to have lunch with her and chat, and for her to meet Bianca, who was mostly pretty well behaved. And then we came home and played under the airconditioning vent because it was bloody hot yesterday, 40*C, then I ate some bad leftover pavlova and well, have been pretty sick ever since. But I’m not focussing on that! Positivity is the aim this year!
New Year’s Eve was fairly low key but fun. We went to our friends Cathy and Cam’s house for dinner and then played board games once the kids were in bed. They have three- and five-year-old girls who are IN LOVE with Bianca (and vice versa) so there was much playing and fun. We reminisced about past new year’s eves and Dave and I realised this was our eighth together as a couple, and we can remember each one. That also seems surreal.
So, a new year, a(nother) new beginning. I have been thinking about things and I’m not going to do specific resolutions again this year, because I always end up with too many to fit all the areas I want to change, and I end up achieving none of them. Instead I have three goals, which I think should be quite doable:
Reach out and reconnect with friends. I always feel enriched when I do, but my natural state is to curl up in a ball and hide away. This also includes spending more quality, non-kid time with Dave.
Declutter and streamline – both at home and in my life.
Concentrate on doing things I enjoy and make time for them, whether it’s writing, cooking, going for a walk, even putting a facemask on – anything. I’ve slipped into the habit of putting this stuff last, which means it generally doesn’t happen.
My overall goal for the year is to finally kick this depression and become me again. I think I’ve always been mildly depressed, but it’s worse now and where in the past I’d just eat icecream and cry for a bit now it’s affecting other people. I don’t want Bianca to have to live with this. I don’t want to live with this! I’m sick of feeling so maudlin and pathetic; this isn’t me. I’ve had enough and it has to stop, and my goals are all about bringing me back.
Wishing every one a very wonderful Christmas/holiday season and I hope Santa is good to you. Me, I asked for some spare Time and there may just be some in my stocking. Right now it’s about 10:30 Christmas morning; the pressies are unwrapped, the smoked salmon and scrambled eggs have been eaten and now we are sitting outside with our coffees watching Bianca play with her pirate ship water toy thing, and trying to teach my mother to use her ipad. Good lord. And this is the year we decide not to open Champagne at breakfast? Bad idea.
I’ve just started a new role at work, in a team supporting a system built around the one I spent years supporting in London and even before that. This past week was my second one there.
I must admit, the first week was really hard for me, to the point that I was coming home in tears and wondering if I’d made the right move. I’ve got so much knowledge in this area, and they really need it, so I should be able to shine here. But that week was a bad week for the team; a few things went live (including my old project) and affected them so they were all frazzled and had no time to even give me any work. So I sat there reading documents and sloping off at five because I was so bored, only to come in the next day to find they’d all been up till 2am with a production problem.
I thought, what the hell have I got myself into? I wasn’t happy in my old team and the java development wasn’t particularly challenging, but at least the pressure was a lot lower. The role had been sold to me as a sort of saviour child for the team, taking on the ongoing problems that no one had time to fix and generally being a star. I liked the idea of being a star. But here everyone’s run into the ground with their eyes hanging from their heads in exhaustion and all I’m doing is surfing the net and pretending to read configuration documents.
It’s possible I had unrealistic expectations of what I’d achieve in the first week.
Last week was a bit better. I started getting access to the things I need and did a couple of tasks. Granted they weren’t very difficult tasks (I’m bemused at how impressed everyone is, they were basically admin and once you’d done one you could do the others) but at least I contributed something, and I’m starting to feel comfortable in the team.
It’s made a huge difference to my outlook. I still haven’t fixed the world for them or dazzled them with my brilliance but I suppose there’s still time for that.
Ha! When I went onto the Ikea website just now a message popped up asking me if I wanted to participate in a survey. They certainly hit the jackpot with me!
I mean, maybe it would have been quicker if they’d asked me “what DIDN’T you purchase at Ikea last time you were there?”
Okay I’m kidding with this snapshot, sometimes I buy things elsewhere too. But it’s almost true!
I liked telling them how much I like Ikea, but the questionnaire was quite tedious, asking me time and again what I thought about the store, the cafe, the products, whether they had the products, whether I liked putting them together, et cetera et cetera, so at the end I felt I should at least be rewarded with a little gift voucher or something. But what did I get? Not a sausage! Pure Profile at least gives me a dollar to finish a survey! Oh well, I suppose my love for Ikea should be its own reward.
For what it’s worth, Bianca didn’t wake up after all when she cried at the end of yesterday’s post; she just grizzled a bit and went back to sleep until it was time to go to the doctor’s, so I had plenty of time to do what I needed and that bit of overreacting on my part was quite unnecessary! But it was a bit of a wasted trip. Just before we went I found out her cousin Olivia (who goes to the same childcare and who B was playing with on Sunday) had hand foot and mouth disease, plus on Sunday Bianca ran full tilt into Dave in a move similar to what the Bananas in Pyjamas do all the time, only instead of bouncing off comically she went down like a felled tree and cracked her head on the floor. Which freaked us out big time. Luckily there’s no sign of damage, but I talked to our doctor and we decided to hold off on the vaccinations till next week so that if she does come down with anything there’ll only be two possible causes instead of three.
Thus is the fun of plannng where kids are concerned.
*
I’m coming to the conclusion that the key to having time to yourself is simply to take it, like Grace Jones in Conan the Destroyer:
Dave is really good at this. He still goes cycling on the weekends, and has nerdy games nights almost every week, and then he and his friend Darren decided to brew their own beer so on Saturday they spent a couple of hours getting the equipment and setting it up. Meanwhile I’ve been left trying to get Bianca to sleep on my own after he’s disappeared, or spending half the weekend alone (and the rest of the time he’s often “too tired” after a ride to do what we planned) and I’ve felt bloody resentful about it. But whose fault is it, apart from mine? I think it’s a common issue – a lot of my girlfriends have complained that they’ve given up so many things they enjoyed before having children while their husbands continue as if nothing much changed – but we still have the power within us to stop it happening so much. It’s our mother/martyr instinct.
So, what to do? Well, I have to work out the things I used to love doing, and then find a way to put them back into my days. Which means pushing back at Dave to get him to look after the baby – and if necessary, leave the house so it will happen. (If I have problems settling down to write in a messy house with a toddler who keeps visiting me, then maybe I need to go to the library instead.) Instead of concentrating on the neverending chores, I have to put my stuff first until they become habits again. And sometimes, I’ll have to say no, actually I don’t want to watch TV tonight, I want to do something else.
Yoga, meditation, walking, writing. Cross stitch and knitting. Curling up on a couch with a cup of tea and a magazine. And long, hot baths. Quiet time in my head. These are all the things which make me feel pampered and luxurious, and well, sane.
Do you have any advice on how to avoid the guilt of taking time out for yourself?
How the hell do I do it? How do I get the balance back? I know, I’ve been asking this same question for the last year and a half, but my baby is now 20 months old and I’m no bloody closer to finding the answer. I’m trying, honest I am. I trying to find out how to put back into my days the things I enjoy but it just doesn’t go.
Friday evening after the baby went to bed I said wistfully, I miss having time for me. I mean yes at that particular moment we were lolling on the couch drinking a glass of wine and watching Dexter, but that’s important too, you know? It’s the rest of the day when I don’t have time to think straight that I’m talking about.
Then Dave said, “but you’ve just had three weeks off work, and Bianca was at creche three days each week, so what are you talking about?” And I said, “good point,” because what’s the use of trying to explain? The house was a pigsty and he’d seemed to take my holiday as an excuse to do nothing at all to help (as well as ride to work and get home late), so even on those days once I’d got her up, fed, dressed and out the door (late), cleared up the kitchen and the tv room, done dishes and washing, there we’re nearly at lunchtime. And just about every day I had some outing on that took several hours, so there were only a couple of hours left before I had to pick her up and start the dinner/bath/bed routine, and with the house the way it was even if I’d been able to shake the guilt and do something just for me, I couldn’t relax enough to do it.
The house is clean now. I had the girls over for cross stitch last Thursday so I spent the day excavating the living areas and folding the piles of laundry, and it looks lovely. I feel better now and I’m trying hard to maintain it but it shits me to be constantly picking up and wiping down benchtops and oh god, the vacuuming! What a Sisyphus job it all is. But right now, I feel better. My friend Amelia admitted to having postnatal depression for the last eight months and said, ‘that’s why my house is a mess, it reflects my mental state.” Well, I think I’m the other way around, my mental state reflects my house. So I really have to work harder to keep it neat.
So here we are, midday on a Monday. I go back to work tomorrow, and I think I’m looking forward to it, just to get out of the house again. Right now Bianca is napping and I’m stealing this time for me, to try to get some of these thoughts out of my head, and break the block that’s been keeping them in. But soon we have to go to the doctor for her 18 month vaccination (two months late) so I’d better go make her a sandwich for the car and get everything ready before she wakes because otherwise we’ll never get out on time. And then I’ve got to hang up a load of washing and deal with a dozen little chores that are all spinning around my head and getting bigger and more daunting by the minute. And the fucking floor needs vacuuming again.
How the hell do you do it?
PS. Crap. She just woke up, an hour earlier than she should. Crap crap crap!
So as I mentioned at the end of the last post (you did read it all the way to the end, didn’t you?) the following week was Bedroom Week. Fnar fnar! Oy, get your minds out of the gutter, that’s not at all what I mean. Unfortunately. (And although my laughable dreams of blogging it as it happened have crumbled to dust under the foot of reality, I still want to tell you about it because it turned out fabulous.)
No, Bedroom Week is because we’ve lived in this house for two years now (!) and we have done feck all that we planned. We’re not exactly DIY dynamos over here. So, instead of letting it drag on and on with nothing on our huge list ever getting prioritised Dave said, what if we focussed on one room and got it all done at once? He would take the week off to do all the painting and stuff, and I’d have a deadline to choose the colours and arrange everything I keep telling him I want to do. And so this week became The Time When Bedroom Stuff Gets Done. Fnar indeed!
I had big plans for making mood boards for him but you know what, when you’re a noob and can’t work the software they take a really long time. I should have stuck with scissors and glue, except that most of the things I wanted on the mood board were in the computer. It took me a whole train ride into work just to paste rectangles of the paint colours in and then I gave up and did it in Pinterest instead. I’m going for a sort of luxury hotel look, calm and serene with silvery grey walls and white bedding. And no clutter. (That could be the hardest part, judging by the piles of crap that are usually in the room.) We’ve got lovely soft grey silky curtains to work with and the plan is for a chocolate brown leather bed, once we’ve found the right one. Here are some shots of inspiration rooms to show sort of what I mean:
As for the budget, this room was going to be pricier than we’d normally like to spend because paint is expensive over here and I need the new dresser, so I suggested $1500 as a generous ballpark. Dave said what about $2000 including what I’ve already spent? He was probably being sarcastic about all the paint tester pots I’ve bought over the past few months but I distracted him by asking if that included the curtains, which were about $500 (we got ones for the TV room at the same time and I’ve not split the bill by room yet). In the end we decided to suck it and see, with the understanding that I am a tightwad and am not likely to go crazy buying anything.
Here’s my list of everything that I wanted to get done:
Paint ceiling white
Paint all wooden trim and doors in Wickham Semi Gloss
Paint walls Dulux Grand Piano Half White Duck QuarterGrand Piano Quarter who knows, just flip a coin
Paint inside wardrobes?
Add trim to boring plain doors to make them interesting
Spray paint door handles
Buy new dresser at Ikea
Steam clean carpet
Reorganise wardrobes once have new dresser
Arrange electrician to install new ceiling lights
Buy new clothes hamper
Buy new white bedding
Buy chair?
Buy hooks for back of door
Choose new artwork for walls
HANG new artwork for walls
And the things I didn’t expect to get done this week or within our budget:
Find new bedside tables
Find leather bed
Get new carpet (this is probably a few years down the track and possibly not until we’re ready to sell)
I’m so excited about all this. I was a bit put out that I had to go to work while he had all the fun, but then my attention span for painting is quite short. And it’s really nice to feel that I have permission to buy things to make our room pretty. I don’t mean that Dave’s letting me do it, it’s ME that doesn’t like to spend money, which is half the reason it’s taking so long to do anything around here. But because it’s Bedroom Week and I have a budget, it feels okay.
Next time: I’ll dig out some before pictures, and tell the story of why my walls had spots.
Last week we went to Warrnambool with Dave’s parents and his good sister and her family. It was a sort of last hurrah for Cath, who’s expecting a baby at the end of the month. I’m surprised how well we did seeing just how much of his family there was ALL THE TIME. Mind you, I was ready to come home at the end of it – five days of All Family All the Time was quite enough for me, plus I really missed our birds who were themselves on holiday at an awesome parrot boarding place in Kinglake.
Warrnambool, it turns out, is really nice. On the first day we went down to the beachfront, where Bianca got her first look at big waves:
{thank goodness for toddler harnesses}
Then we went to play minigolf, whereupon she pitched a full on fit whenever we tried to stop her nicking all the balls, or indeed switch the club for a mini kidsized one.
{beware: tantrum imminent}
And we went to Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village which is a historical settlement place centered around life in the area around 1870. It’s like Sovereign Hill in Ballarat only much smaller and sweeter and not anywhere near as commercial. We had gorgeous weather and Bianca was most taken by the chickens and trying to roll down the grassy hill. Oh, and pretending to be a pirate (although there weren’t any pirates really).
In the evening we went back for dinner and Shipwrecked, a “sound and laser show” focussing on the shipreck of the Loch Ard. We’d learned about it during the day: only two people survived the wreck, along with a giant statue of a peacock. The people here are quite taken with this peacock, which is currently insured for four million dollars. It’s quite nice, though I found the stories of what the people went through in the wreck more interesting.
Anyway, the tour and following light show (complete with fake rain and shaking seats) did a good job of evoking what it would have felt like to be on that ship, stuck in a thick fog and not knowing how close you were to death, but it soon took an unfortunate turn to the melodramatic when the faces of the actors disintegrated into laser ghosts and faded away. Then the ghost of the captain intoned, “but there was one other survivor…” and then out of the thunder and waves rose and image of the damn peacock that no shit would have been the size of an office building, complete with triumphant musical crescendo. It was rather cringeworthy. The whole tone of the show changed from: all those people died, it was horrible, imagine drowning in such conditions, blah blah blah… to hey, but at least we got to keep our fucking dust collector! They really fucking love their peacock.
On the way out you’re fed through the gift shop where you can buy a two-foot-tall replica of the peacock for $14,999, or a two-inch plastic fridge magnet of same for $2.50. Your choice. My cynicism aside, it was a really nice place and it was well worth the $16 it cost for a two-day pass (though you won’t need two days), as is the show ($26, or $50 with a reasonable 2-course dinner), so if you’re down that way I encourage you to go see the show and tell me if you don’t think that fucking peacock is cursed.
What I can’t recommend is Cheeseworld, which is just outside Warrnambool. I was all excited about this because obviously it is a world! of cheese! So I insisted that we go on the rainiest day. Dave’s family didn’t seem that keen but I put that down to them having gone before. But I should have listened, because:
the guide said it has a restaurant but it turned out to be a draughty cafe with chips and pies in bains-marie. (And, to be fair, a reasonable ploughman’s lunch.)
the gift shop contained nothing but tat.
the scheduled “cheese tasting” turned out to be a woman handing out precut cubes of cheddar from a tupperware container.
And that was it. No tours, no history of cheesemaking or the company and no choices of which cheeses to sample. There is a museum which we didn’t go into because Cath said it was tacky and by then I was ready to listen to her.
Maybe I’m being a bit harsh. I was in a pretty bad mood that afternoon since I had a cold. But, I’ve been to the Milawa Cheese Company near Beechworth in Northern Victoria, and the Yarra Valley Dairy, and both these places gave a much better experience with far more variety of cheese, and neither of them claimed to be Cheeseworld. Heck, even the Beechworth Honey shop was more interesting, and I’m not that fussed about honey. So save your time and do something else.
Actually, the thing that really put me off Cheeseworld was their deli shop. They had tubs of fancy yoghurt, the kind with passionfruit or berries swirled through it, for $14. Only we buy that occasionally for a treat and I said to Dave I’m sure I don’t pay more than $8 on that. In fact even that seemed too much, so I checked at the supermarket on the way home, and it was $4.15. They’d marked it up over $9. Which is absolutely disgusting. So yeah, I think Cheeseworld sucks. Don’t go there!
But our very last day was better. We drove to Port Fairy to visit family friends who were also on holidays, and had a lovely time talking and eating fish and chips, and then we all went down to the beach and took photos of Bianca having her first real play with sand and water. (She did go to the beach when she was 6 months old, but all she did was rub sand into her eyes then.)
And when it looked like I could no longer avoid being in the photos I stole the camera and took arty pictures of seaweed.
And that was the end. It was a lovely week, but I’m glad to be home in our own space and with our birds again. I missed them far more than I thought I would. And this coming week is pretty exciting, it’s Bedroom Week!
I saw this over at Louise’s blog, which is always at the top of my daily read list because she’s so inspiring both on the financial and decluttering fronts, and thought it would make a nice easy way to break this writer’s block I’m languishing in. So here goes.
A-Age – 40 B-Bed Size – Queen C-Chore you hate - Vacuuming. Alas, it needs to be done a lot at our place, thanks to baby and parrots. At least the satisfying noise all that bird seed makes as it goes up the tube cuts the boredom a bit. D-Dogs – No. We have parrots. One day though, I’ll have another Cairn Terrier, and Dave will want a Springer Spaniel. E-Essential start to your day – Coffee and cuddles F-Favourite Colour- Orange, though I hardly ever wear it or have it near me. G-Gold or Silver – Silver. H-Height – 5′ 3″ I- Interests – Writing, reading, cross stitch, cooking, organising, DIY and decorating. J-Job Title – Computer Programmer. K-Kids – Just the one, Bianca, 18 months already. L-Live – Melbourne Australia M-Mothers Name – Tiny N-Nickname – Nick Nick, Bou (Dave), my sausage (mum) (really), Daddy! (Bianca) (sigh) O-Overnight hospital stays – appendix, tonsils, absesses in ears, and then the baby. The last one was the best because the hospital had a cake trolley that came round about 3pm. P-Pet Peeves – People in general. What, I have to narrow it down? Okay, people who don’t bother to spell or use punctuation correctly, and worse say it doesn’t matter. Q-Quotes from films – “I do not think that means what you think it means,” and “Move the thing! And the other thing!” R-Right or Left Handed – Right S-Siblings – one half brother I’d rather not think about T-Time you wake up – 6am U-Underwear – black basics from Target V-Vegetables you hate – I’m not a huge fan of bok choy. The stems always go slimy. Which is weird because sliminess is the exact reason I love aubergine so much. W-What makes you run late – Baby wrangling X-X-Rays you’ve had – teeth, back, arm Y-Yummy food that you make – Molten chocolate pudding desserts. And my roast potatoes are pretty fine. Z-Zoo animals – I’d rather not see animals in a zoo, but I’m always fond of birds and the butterfly enclosure at Melbourne Zoo was good.
