My head hurts

Well not really but kinda.

I'm trying to read about the plight of Australian drill rappers OneFour.

My mother however, would rather I interact with her. Which I guess is understandable.
We are nearly at the end of the first of five and a half weeks.

I never like speaking ill of people.

Especially those that I love dearly.

I always like to focus on the positive. But, sometimes. sometimes, I just need to...

...at least think I think I need to...

Even now, when I so dearly know that I need to release the intensely twisted emotions that currently consume my every being, I can't help but wonder if it would be better to keep it to myself?

Hence the sore head I guess.

I'm now sitting seam immersed in a tub of cold water. I have a glass of red wine and the hiccups. Obviously one is more favourable than the other. This is the second, perhaps even third bought of the hiccups that I have endured today. My confusion of the exact number relates to the debatable duration between the time one thinks they are cured and then randomly return.

Unfortunately though this precious me time activity that I have tried to gift myself must be short lived. Zany, who should perhaps be known as Miss 13.5 for context sake of new readers, needs to be escorted home from her friends house in approximately 10 minutes. Part of me wants to believe that we live in a world where she would be able to make the trip home unaccompanied but there is also a part of me that likes having her around and doesn't want to take the risk.

So on that note I will bid you adieu.

Until I next find a moment to right

Poor woe is me

It's late afternoon. The sun is well and truly on her descent for the day. I'm sitting on a chair in the garden trying to soak the last of her diminishing rays. The gentle breeze blowing by does not aid in my quest.

My eyes are red and burning. The residual sting of earlier tears lingering longer than I care for.

One dear customer left me with this today

I cried at work today.

On the checkouts.

While serving customers.

It took nearly four customers till I could pull myself together. I wasn't a complete blubbering mess but I know there was pain in my eyes that they could not help but to see.

My mind was doing the cruelest of things to me. It was so mean and hurtful, yet I know that in a bizarre twisted way it was meant with kindness and love.

Not that, that really makes it ok.

As much as I always hope for the best, I often prepare for the worst. A kind of safety net I guess. That's what was happening today.

I'm waiting to hear the outcome of a job interview from last week. It's still with the same company, just a different position and most definitely a promotion. I hate hearing myself say it, but if I'm brutally honest there is a part of me that thinks I deserve this. Actually brutal honesty is to admit that I think I should have just been offered the position.

So you see my quandary?

To not be given this will be devastating. I have worked hard and I know I am the right person for the job. To be told I'm not will be akin to being told I am useless. It's like I'm already mourning because my stupid head got sick of waiting for the outcome to be revealed. On the upside though at least I now feel like I might be able to cope with the direst of outcomes. Nothing could be worse than what I have put myself through today.

It's been a while...

Actually it has been more than a while since I last tried to share here. Well over a year in fact. And a for a long time before that I only only shared sporadically. I stopped feeling like I belonged here. It no longer felt like my space.

I did try and create new spaces but they didn't really feel right either. For a very long time it felt like I didn't belong anywhere. And by anywhere I don't just mean the online world. I was also having troubles fitting into the real world.

Truth be told I'm still a little scared about where I do belong but there is a louder voice yelling out to me that says of course I belong here so just write. So that's what I'm going to do.

Life is it's usually busyness. However it is filled with mundane everyday occurrences so it also seems there is a lot of nothingness. 

Working nights for the last two years has taken quite a toll on me. Which is something I have only recently discovered and I was quite frankly taken by surprised by.

Thankfully the universe had my back and the planets aligned so that a more day based position became available when I needed it most. A chance to learn a new department and do something different is always welcomed in my book.

So what else have I been up to I hear you ask?

Well, not a lot really. That is part of the toll that two year of working nights has taken. I was so burnt out and tired from only four to five hours sleep in a twenty four hour period I had no energy to do anything of interest. Life has merely been a case of putting one foot in front of the other and hoping that eventually I would get somewhere.

Somehow I have managed to squeeze regular exercise into almost daily life. It is probably fair to say that I am fitter than ever before. April saw me run my first half marathon. Sunday just gone saw me run my second. I may not have broken any land speed records, but I didn't come last either. I also didn't actually prepare for either event I just hoped that my body was up to it. Thankfully it was.

I did it! I’m not gunna lie, I found the last 6km super hard. So much harder than I remember from last time. On the upside though I somehow managed to shave a few minutes off. Not as many as I would have liked but I’m still pretty happy. After last week’s 10km I was adamant that next year I would run a full marathon. Right now I’m not so sure. Maybe I will settle for putting in some proper training for the half and see if I can go faster. #timewilltell #runrhiannarun #bunburysurftosurf

A post shared by Rhianna Writes (@rhiannasrambles) on Oct 14, 2017 at 9:21pm PDT

My brain fluctuates from having so much to say to complete emptiness in micro seconds.

Obviously it is currently in the complete emptiness stage.

Lovely is messaging me. Demanding if I want more help around the house I need to buy new furniture. That child drains me so some days. 

No wonder my mind is blank.

I promise I'll be back soon

The me day that wasn't

Today was supposed to be a me day.

A most perfect place for a bit of me time.

I had thought that I was on top of everything. You know, all the housework was out the way, washing under control and the majority of the dishes done and dusted. Leaving little old me free to do as I please. Free to write, or crochet, or sleep or whatever my little heart desires.

Sure there were more useful things I could have done, like clean out the pantry, the floors always need sweeping and all the rest of it. But all such things didn't have to be done if I didn't want to do them. I had thought that there was enough general order and things done, that I could let a few things slide and take the time to focus on me.

Only somewhere along the line I have somehow found endless crappy things to do. Turns out the only the way the washing was under control was if that meant spread all over the laundry floor with what appears to be half the local beach or school sand pit. Hard to tell the difference really, all I know is that there is sand everywhere and there shouldn't be.

From there I got asked to work later which made me start prepping dinner super early which meant I was alerted to the fact that the kitchen is almost in a state of disrepair. Apparently the aftermath of breakfast was more severe than I realised.

And then...

As if this wasn't all enough, I remember the play date that Teapot has lined up with a new friend who's mother I don't really know and will therefore invite in for coffee which means really I should make a bit of an effort to hide my lack of housekeeping enthusiasm.

Oh the sighing.

Interview with a Blogger

Well actually it is an interview with me. Which I guess doesn't make the title inaccurate, just a little  weird because I imagine you are wondering why on earth I would interview myself. Well I haven't. I have however been going through some old files on Mac and the following just happened to be uncovered. For the life of my I can't recall who was so kind to be interviewing me but I am sure it would have made my day.

Because I have nothing better to do
(bahahaha yeah right there are a thousand other things I should be doing right now)
it made perfect sense to create a collage of me from July 2013

The file was last modified on 7pm 9th July 2013. Even though it is only two and a half years ago it feels like a lifetime ago. We would have still been back in Darwin, somehow managing to squeeze into a two bedroom townhouse. Our adventure of a lifetime (which fyi I struggle to write without a #) was still just a pipe dream that was edging closer with every day. With 376 days till our actual departure day I am pretty sure that on this particular day it was still just that, a pipe dream.

But I am digressing.

As I am furiously procrastinating at the moment as well as desperate from some blog fodder, turning the interview into a blog post seemed like a natural progression.

So with out further ado here is an interview with 2013 me.

Name: Rhianna

Blog: A Parenting Life

Blog address: http://www.aparentinglife.com

Blurb about you/your blog: 

Sharing the ups and downs on the road of life as one mother dreams of writing fame. Hoping for the best, forgetting the worst and making the best of come what may. A light hearted look into being a SAHM that wants to fill the world with fairy wishes and butterfly kisses

If you could have named yourself when you were born, what would youhave called yourself? Uhmmm, probably Rhianna, because seriously it is one of the coolest names ever. I have always loved my name. I was 26 before I met another Rhianna and that just makes me feel all kinds of special.

You have won 1 million dollars, but you can only buy ONEthing with it – yes a single item- the rest has to be given away to ONEcharity…. What ONE thing would you buy, and what ONE charity would you donate the rest of the funds to? 

A house and if there were by chance any left over I would donate it to the Love Your Sister campaign. I wish that I could be selfless and say I would just buy a chocolate bar and donate the rest but a house really would be wonderful. I am fairly certain I could find something to live in for around $750,00 and then donate the rest.

Show us the messiest bit of your house as it looks right now 

Seriously! That would mean getting up getting my phone then waiting for the photo to upload to the photo stream and in between all of that I will more than likely get distracted and forget what I am doing and never send this back. I

Could you live the rest of your life never eating your favourite food again… ever? Yep. I can't even think what my favourite food is right now. I am of the opinion that any and all food is good food and if it is in front of me it is my favourite.

You have passed over into the afterlife, you have no choice but to be reincarnated…. You get to choose between two things, unfortunately the choice is between being a flea or a cockroach. Which one would you choose? 

A cockroach for sure. Those things have more lives than cats and can get into anything. Oh the fun you could have.

Show us your favourite pair of shoes 

Favourite pair of what? I live in the tropics, it is thongs or barefoot. Having said that I love my runners

What song can you not help but sing every single time you hear it? 

Dumb ways to way

If aliens do exist, and if they are watching the human race right now, what do you think they’d be thinking about us? 

Not a lot.

Would you wear a onsie out in public? 

Why not?

And lastly, but not at all leastly… Does the tooth fairy really exist? 

Of course she does. In fact my seven year old told me just the other day that when she grows up she is going to be the tooth fairy.

------------

And there you have it. An insight into what I was like way back in 2013. This procrastination post has given me all kinds of adventures and taken me to all sorts of places on my blog. It made for quite a rabbit hole experience which made me think I should probably go and join in with Ultimate Rabbit Hole gals

The joy of running (away from chores)

Monday seems to be the only day at the moment where I can actually make the time to make myself sit down and spew out a few words. Probably not actual writing, but better than nothing.

I pass by these beauties on my run, they always make me smile

This morning as I was pondering over how this post would pan out I thought it would go along the lines of explaining how I am just not coping with the whole being a working mother thing. Despite my hours not being full time and only being of a night. The house is somewhat a lot, shambolic. If we were still living in the topics you would be forgiven for thinking that there had been an internal cyclone. Since we don't live in the tropics you will probably just assume (rightly) that I am a terrible housekeeper.

However since that point in time, when we were invariably running late for school, unable to find a missing shoe and goggles, all while foraging through a rather empty cupboard in the hope food would magically appear because who has time to go food shopping amongst everything else that is expected of them? My outlook has changed a little.

You see while we were terribly late for school, it was pretty much the first time all year, and most definitely the first time this term. Which compared to our efforts prior to #ouradventureofalifetime is a major achievement. Not only that but after depositing late children at school I took myself off for a run. A run that saw me do 5km in 45 minutes. By no means a land record but I was actually able to not walk for a huge portion of that distance. I did a five minute warm up walk and then ran for a solid ten minutes, at which point I gave into my gasping lungs and allowed myself to slow down and walk for an entire minute. After which I got straight back into it and huffed and puffed away for a further ten minutes. The next twenty minutes saw me walking for thirty seconds every five minutes, but man did I feel all kinds of awesome when I was done.

There was certainly no denying that my coffee was earned today.

Any my point is that the awesomeness of my run led me to forgot all the crap I was feeling about all the things I hadn't done.

All those dastardly chores are still waiting to be done. The house still appears to be a disaster zone but I no longer feel so terrible about it all. Eventually the kitchen will be clean, the floors washed and all the washing will be neatly folded in the cupboard rather than strewn across the laundry floor waiting to be washed.

For now though I have probably wasted enough time and should actually get to doing at least some of  the things that need to be done.

Looking back and moving on

I had thought that yesterday's post would have been enough to get me through today. I thought that I had dumped enough of my feelings enabling me to sail through today almost oblivious to what it marked.

Apparently I could not have been more wrong.

Thanks to Facebook and it's lovely 'you have memories from today' feature I was swiftly reminded of all the pain and sadness I have felt on this day over the last six years. Of course some might say that is what I get for checking Facebook before removing myself from the comfort of my bed but whatever.

So much sighing.

Proving that I really am a glutton for punishment that quite possibly wants to wallow in a pool of my own tears once I had finished torturing myself with my heartbreaking Facebook memories I trawled through the archive of my old blog to see what I had to say about it all over there.

The thing that I really love most about blogging is the record that it gives me. All the moments in time that I manage to capture and freeze for all eternity. Even on the saddest of days.

Over the past few days I have been thinking a lot about my writing and my blogs and what I want from it all and where I think it will go. Sadly a part of thinks the answer is nowhere.

As much as I may have a way with words and a story to tell, it is quite possibly not something that will ever be seen by the masses. And I think for the first time in a long time, possibly even ever, I am ok with that.

I haven't given up completely on the notion I will one day be a published author, just the notion that this space will break the internet, because it won't. This space is for me. For me to reminisce, to make sense of my thoughts, to save for years to come.

With that in mind here the collection of all the other posts I have written on this day. 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2013, 2014. My mind is going into overdrive trying to work out what made me not write in 2010 and why the posts from 2013 actually talk about it June rather than now. My guess is that my grief in June was so great that by October I had figured I had gone on about it all enough.

With my new found attitude towards blogging, which will hopefully see me writing more, I have decided to step down from #teamIBOT. Unfortunately the last few months commenting on other people's blogs has felt somewhat of a chore. Which is not the way that it should be.

I want to get back to leaving a comment because the post touched me in some way not because I feel obligated. I just don't have it in me anymore to be the old blogging me that commented all over the place in the hope people would come by and do the same. I want readers who want to be here to see what I have to say rather than dropping by on account of some implied obligation to return comment love. This also means that I will not be joining in linkies (well after today) or hosting Thankful Thursday anymore.

Joining in with Jess for the last time for a bit and hoping that you will still keep popping by once in a while.

Thankful to be getting my groove back

For regular readers playing along you would be only too well aware of the fact that the old Thankful Thursday posts have been a bit few and far the past month. Thankfully it has not really been because I couldn't find anything to be thankful for but more so I have just been flat out and unable to make the time to sit down and blog.

This week however, a change has come over and somehow I have found myself with a little more time on my side. Which I must say has been all kinds of lovely. For the first time in I don't know how long, I feel like, at least for the moment, I may actually have my act together. And it feels incredibly awesome.

What also feels incredibly awesome, and also a little strange, is that I feel more like me than I have for the longest time as well. The strange part is that I didn't even realise I had stopped feeling like me, but I must have because right now I am almost overwhelmed with how much I currently feel like me. And boy does it feel good.

I guess the fact that I am sitting here, in my bra and shorts so the purple hair dye I just put on doesn't stain my top rather than doing dinner preparations is testament to just how me I am feeling. It is has only just gone past lunch time so there is still plenty of time for dinner to be prepared, I just wanted it out the way as I have my first bootcamp session this afternoon.

But back to being thankful.

This week I am thankful for

* timing my shopping at the same time there were heaps of meat specials. I was able to pick up a whole week's worth of meat at half price
* having had some dear family members come and visit for a few weeks
* being able to take said family members to the Valley of the Giants and hang out in the big trees for a few days
* weekend sport having come to an end
* warm and sunny weather. My pasty white legs love being in shorts
* finding a surprise flower growing in my garden
* having some writing I didn't like being well received. Though part of stupid brain keeps saying people are just being too kind
*getting some blogging mojo back

What about you?

What are you thankful for? 

Do share, leave a comment or if you have blog write a post.

An InLinkz Link-up

Just putting it out there

It is a most beautiful early spring morning. Early in spring rather than actually early in the morning mind you. The kids have all been deposited at school, well The Little Two have been, The Teenager is still at home in bed. She has been unwell for a week or so now though she assures me she is going to school today just after the first period. Normally I would be fighting with her and pushing her to go but today I just don't have it in me. Not when her body desperately needs to rest.

Instead I have brought myself here. 

There is coffee and a gentle breeze. Though the gentle breeze I could almost do without. While the sun may be shining there is little warmth in her golden rays. 

My ears are filled with the sounds of birds calling img and singing out to one another. Willy wagtails and ducks are the only ones I can name though. The others flitter about in the tops of the tress making me unable to identify them. I manage to catch a quick glimpse of a very small olive green bird. The colours similar to one we saw at Warren National Park earlier in the year. Mr Writes said they were called a silver eye on account of their brilliant silver eyes. I can't remember now whether I took his word or checked in the book. 

It feels funny calling home Mr Writes now. He hasn't stopped being awesome just with the new blog and all I thought perhaps new names for us all was in order as well. 

Sigh. 

Not that it really matters I guess. 

I've had to leave my beautiful spot and start heading back towards home. My day is awaiting. 

When I first sat down and started writing this I thought it was going to be about how as much as I love being here I still don't really feel like I fit in. It's hard to find someone like me.

I mean I don't want them to be just like me because I love being unique, but just someone similar. You know, they like to write, have kids the same age, don't have to work every day...surely that's not too much to ask is it? If they liked to go for a run every now and then that would be even better. 

Just putting it out there

Joining in with Alicia for Open Slather 

Brain emptying done wrong

This image, of flood plains out at Kakadu, has very little to do with anything in the post, I just like it. A lot.

I have been sitting here (not here as in the above image, just here as in my lounge) with the laptop open on my lap for nearly forty five minutes now. I had a scroll through the Bidding Wars page to see if there were any bargains I needed to bid on. There wasn't but it took quite a time to decide that.

From there I went and had a quick look to see if there was anything of interest in my newsfeed. There wasn't. Sarah over at Move Fuel Love, had shared a photo of Darwin sunset and the current temperature. It made me want to stab her eyeballs just a little.

It rained for 30 seconds this morning in Darwin and at almost 8pm it's currently 28C. BUT the sunsets sure are pretty  This is Winter in the Top End.

Posted by Move Fuel Love on Monday, 15 June 2015

Not only was the sunset amazing, as Darwin sunsets so often are, but at nearly 8pm it was still twenty eight degrees. Twenty eight god dam degrees!!! The only way I can even get close to such a delightful warmth is if I have the air con cranking up that high.

Oh how times change.

There once was a time when I had the air con cranking at eighteen degrees because I so desperately wanted to snuggle under a doona. Now I have it as high as I can, which actually happens to be only twenty six degrees, just so I don't have to wear five hundred layers of clothes.

It would be fair to say that winter and I are not the best of friends. I mean I do love being able to go for a run bang smack in the middle of the day and not dying from heat exhaustion but there is just a small part of me that is longing to be just a little bit warm without having to stand under scolding hot water. Because FYI it turns out that constantly showering in scolding hot water leads to a rather dry scalp which then in turn leads to dandruff.

There was no dandruff in my hair when I lived in the tropics and it bugs me insanely that my locks are constantly infiltrated with little white flakes now.

Sigh.

When I started this post, oh so long ago now, thanks to the concentration of a goldfish and being called on to go pick up the husband from hockey, I had planned on joining in with the ever so lovely Miss Cinders for her monthly emptying of the brain. Only when I went there just now I realised I completely and utterly missed the brief.

I thought (very wrongly) that it was a free association writing thing where you just sat and wrote whatever hair brain idea passed between your ears. As I have so clearly done. But it is not. Well not entirely. There are some loose statements to answer.

Double sigh.

Luckily I have more than one blog so I can pop over to APL and do it there. And even more luckily (totes acceptable grammar in the blog world btw) it is Tuesday and I have blogged so I can join in with EssentiallyJess and the IBOT gang

Where nobody knows your name

Back home, before we started #ouradventureofalifetime, I had not lived anywhere else. For thirty six years I lived in the one city. Which meant I knew a lot of people.

In my much younger years I worked in one of the most well known shops in town and partied like there was no tomorrow. Which meant a lot of people knew who I was as well.

Which was kinda cool. It left me feeling a bit like a rock star. People were forever saying hi or giving me a smile as they walked by. It felt good.

Even after I had left that job, stopped partying and started to grow up and become a mum, I still felt like I knew lots of people. There would be no ducking down to the shops without making sure my clothes were at least somewhat respectable because what if I saw someone I knew?

Not that I was full face of make up kind of person or even anything remotely like that, but the full of holes house clothes were exactly that, for the house. Certainly not for wearing to the shops regardless of how quick I thought I was going to be.

Nearly fifty percent of all shopping trips took longer than they should of because I would inevitably bump into someone I knew and got chatting with. Now the check out operators look at me strangely as I try to make conversation with them as they pack my groceries. If I don't my whole day could pass without adult conversation.

It's a funny thing moving to a new place where you know no one. Or at least next to no one. I can count on one hand the people that I know where we now live. Which obviously makes the chances of me running into anyone at the shops somewhere between none and buckleys.

Which in some ways is not a bad thing.

Yesterday I procrastinated on going to the shops despite desperately needing some milk. I just couldn't face getting out of my house clothes. And thats when it dawned on my that it really didn't matter if I went to the shops in my daggier than daggy house clothes and double pluggers because I am just another face in the crowd that nobody knows.

Mind you as I was wandering around the shops gathering my milk and things (because it is impossible to go to the shops and only get what you went for) I walked past a lady who was also clearly wearing her house clothes. Only she had taken it one step further than I and was wearing socks with her thongs. And was clearly not phased in the least by what anyone might have thought. 

Her partner sheepishly pushing the trolley a little behind her perhaps not so much but again that seemed of little concern to sock and thong wearing lady.

Because at the end of the day what others think, whether they know you or not, is not what matters or counts. As longs as we are comfortable in what we wear or what we do or what we say that is all that matters.

Joining in with Alicia for Open Slather