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University studies Work

So stoked!

It’s a-happening! I’ve been given the green light! In just a few short months, I’ll know a whole heap more about consumer behaviour thanks to Professor Brett Martin and AMN400.

Woohoo!!!

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random scribblings

scribble 1

She forced herself to lie still in the darkness, squashed into the tiny space beneath her bed. Listening intently, all senses on high alert. Trying desperately to hear past the pounding of her heart. Her rapid breathing was so loud! She had to muffle it, and quickly, or she would be found.

She could hear him coming. Closer, and closer, and closer. He was calling, “Where are you? I’m going to find you! You can’t hide from me!” She lay stiller than ever, her hand over her mouth.

Through the horizontal slit between the bedcovers and the carpet, she could see that her bedroom was still empty… for now. She could hear him coming, chortling with glee.

“I’m going to get you!”

Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it was going to beat right out of her chest. The door opened and she quickly muffled the involuntary scream that tried to escape her fingers. She watched in dread as his unsteady feet moved unerringly toward her hiding place. Then he quickly lifted the covers, exposing her, chortling loudly.

Her laughter mixed with his as she crawled out and enveloped him in a bear hug. “Yes, you found me! Okay, so now it’s your turn to hide, and I get to count to twenty!”

She gently turned her little brother around, smiling at his childish giggling as he ran out of the room. Then she covered her eyes and started counting loudly. “One… two… three…”

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Random thoughts

Day 5 – in which I lament the absence of Day 4’s post

Yup, missed a day. Got rebellious last night, and decided to remain ‘stuck’ in front of the TV instead of turning the Macbook back on.

In my defense, I shall now post the scribbling I wrote yesterday morning, 5am, on my iPod Touch. And seeing as I’m not in a WiFi environment, and therefore can’t just quickly email it to my Macbook, I shall have to type it out again.

I hope you will consider this adequate penance. I also hope you enjoy it!

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my novel-in-progress Random thoughts

Day 3 – in which I completely miss the mark

Yesterday morning I wrote something about aiming for ‘morning blogging’. Ha!!!!! This (7.32pm) is my first time turning on my computer today! (Well, actually, I tell a lie. I had it on between 6.30 and 7am, just to tweet and update facebook for work. And start some preliminary job-hunting for next year.)

It’s been a busy day. But Miss 6’s half of her bedroom is now clean and tidy (woohoo!) and she has a brand new fish-tank sitting empty on her desk. Sunday markets in Caboolture can be quite a motivator for cleaning, I’ve found! She’s been after a fish tank of her own for some time, so I decided I’d use whatever currency I had to help her organise her HUGE creation of completed and partially completed ‘collages’ – and all the miscellaneous crap that ‘could be used in a collage one day!!!’ (A hoarder at 6. This does not bode well! Or is it that all kids are like this at this age?!) So there went quite a number of hours. Then there was church this morning, and the Sunday drive after, and that doesn’t leave as much time as I’d hoped…

So yes. Writing time? Not so much. But I did a couple of hundred words yesterday – does that count? LOL!

Well, I guess I could try fitting some in now. It’s quiet, I’m snug and warm, and there’s a couple of hours left of laptop battery. So here goes…

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#blogjune my novel-in-progress Uncategorized

Day 2 post-#blogjune challenge – in which I sleep in until 6.15am

Day 2 since #blogjune and I think I’ll try maintaining this ‘habit’ for as long as I can. The ‘non-assignment writing’ writing that I’ve been doing recently (as I mentioned to BFF -!! – yesterday) has already resulted in more ‘metacognition’ (her word! One of the many reason’s she’s an inspiration…) and re-drafting thoughts in my head once they’ve been thunk. Pretty cool.

So anyway, I also thought I’d aim for morning blogging. Was inspired by a post or two on writing (thanks to @AlisonWnz for the link in my tweetstream!) so for today there’s not a whole heap to reflect on… unless you count the morning sleep “in” until 6.15. At which point I had to get up because Miss 3 decided to remove her nighttime nappy but miss the toilet, spoiling last night’s efforts. But that’s okay. 6.15am for me is 45 minutes later than my normal ‘sleep-ins’!

So now – off to do some writing! See you tomorrow, in which I may (or may not) report on my progress…

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#blogjune momentous events

Blogging June

This is the thirtieth time I’ve posted on my blog this month. I’ve done it! I’ve managed to blog June! Admittedly, not every day had its own post. In fact, well over a third of the month I didn’t manage to post at all. But thanks to an easier workload in this final week, I have been able to catch up, adding numbers of posts per day. (Deciding to finish that short story that’s been bugging me for a couple of months helped, too! Otherwise I think I may have just been filling in countless numbers of memes…)

So, today’s a day for congratulations. My final post in what has been, at times, a bit of an epic challenge. From family illness, through to a massive assignment load, then to worrying over being so far behind with it all, hence to memes, and then to Devilish Detail, it was been quite a bit of a journey! One I’m glad to have taken… but happy also to have finished. And yes, I think I’ll join in again next year – maybe I’ll be more practised in blogging by then, and can aim for greater consistency?!!!

Thanks, dear readers, for taking this journey with me.

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#blogjune

Reality blues meme

Thanks to @jobeaz for inspiring this post.

What I would like to be doing:

1. relaxing

2. writing

3. re-arranging my home to suit my current family life, rather than the family life I like to think I have

4. enjoying being with my kids

5. reading a book while sitting in the sun

What I am doing instead:

1. worrying about money (well, lack of it, actually)

2. yelling at my kids when they interrupt my sitting in front of my gorgeous Macbook Pro, in the sun

3. listening to the birds, and the breeze through the trees (man, it’s wonderful living in paradise)

4. thinking that I may have to get up soon and fix some lunch. And then maybe think about doing some marketing work that I said I’d do today.

5. preparing to console Miss 3, who’s currently on the losing end of an argument with Miss 6 in the sandpit. This could get sandy. I should maybe think about running a bath for them as well (refer number 4)

… actually, I may be one of the fortunate ones, whose “What I would like to be doing” isn’t too far from the ” what I actually am doing”. Thank you, Lord, for that revelation!

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#blogjune Random thoughts

Collage goodness

At 6.15 this morning, I called the childcare centre. I wanted to check what was meant to happen over school holidays.

Whoops. My younger two kids were expected, and I was going to be charged for the day. So what the hey – I’m paying; they like going; so let them go!

Upshot: Miss 6 and I get six hours together. Alone. (Wow. That hasn’t happened in, like, a millenium!) So. Movies? No. Shopping? No. Her choice? “Let’s do some collage, Mummy!!!” (Great…)

I couldn’t be bothered driving all the way home, only to drive back out to pick up the younger two again, so “doing some collage” involved buying cheap craft stuff from the closest $2 shop. We then wandered over to Caboolture Library, where Miss 6 chose for us to sit in side-by-side carrels for our collage creating.

  

Hours later, she was happy. I was happy. We headed off to collect the younger two, trailing paper covered in glue, matchsticks, butterflies and flowers.

What an unusual day. I wonder what tomorrow will bring?!

(All photos were taken by Miss 6 on my iPod. They’re un-edited. Not bad, hey?! I especially like the way she chose to do an extreme close-up of the chair cover. I guess the pattern, and the colour, intrigued her?)

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#blogjune Random thoughts

Weird things that can kill you…

I read recently in a friend’s blog that in France, 1518, 400 people died in a ‘dance plague’. Yes – they danced til they died, of heart attacks, exhaustion, and the like. Apparently they didn’t want to, and were pleading for onlookers to help them. Strange.

It got me wondering. I wonder what other ‘normal’ activities have been known to kill people, en masse, like that? Have there been cases of mass plagues of ‘harvesting’? How about ‘washing the dishes’? ‘Skipping’? ‘Nagging?’ I wonder!

Anyone out there know of any?

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#blog12daysxmas #blogjune Random thoughts

And again…

I find myself unable to blog on a daily basis due to illness and busyness.

What is it about this month that has caused my inability to keep this blog happening on a daily basis?!!! Looking back, I know it’s been filled with both illness (that vomiting bug in the first couple of weeks wiped me out!) and busyness (Uni assignments, work deadlines etc) but has this month been more trying than the others or is it just run-of-the-mill reflection of how my life is at the moment? I’m not entirely sure. Maybe taking this #blogjune challenge was not as realistic as I thought it would be. It’s funny – I did the #blog12daysxmas challenge with no hiccups, in spite of floods keeping my family stranded in 1770 where staples and petrol ran out within days, and prices of ferry rides to Bundaberg (ha! Where THEY were flooded worse than us!) skyrocketed. I even managed the #octshowntell last year. So what is it about this one that I just couldn’t manage it? Is it that 12 days, or one story a week, is do-able, but 30 consecutive days is not? Hmmm…?

Well, I’m not particularly impressed with myself. At church this morning, we were regaled with a delightful reading from “Reuben Ramsay OR The Boy That Nobody Wanted”. A 1849 tale of a boy who looks into the mirror after deciding that nobody wants him, and then realising that he doesn’t even want himself. The Christian influence enters in the form of a lady, who tells him that what he was looking into when he realised that he didn’t even want himself was actually the ‘mind’s mirror’. As in, he wasn’t looking at the reflection of his physical person, but his personality. It was this – his personality – that he didn’t like, and he could change this by giving his heart back to Jesus, who made his heart in the first place.

An accurate reflection of us all, I would suspect, when we truly self-reflect. Well, it is an accurate reflection for me, anyway. I’d prefer to see something a lot nicer in there. Someone who keeps the commitments she makes, for example, to blog daily for #blogjune. Someone who doesn’t keep on stuffing up, publicly, and having to apologise and start over. Wouldn’t that be great. Maybe I should re-read that book, and take the advice offered.