Category: Life

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Bloxham Marketing Life Random thoughts Technology Work

Full to the brim

That’s how my life feels right now. It’s just so jam-packed… and I love it! Okay – I’m up again, on my computer, posting at 5.52 am, after settling Mr 3 at 2.48am and again at 3.52am, and then deciding to just stay up because I’ve got so much to do anyway…

So the weekend before last, Hubby and I spent Saturday together. No kids. (Yes, this is actually rare enough that it rates a mention. Sad, really…!) and we visited IKEA. We’ve been married almost 18 years, and only now am I learning that his dislike of ‘clutter’ means that he dislikes bookshelves. He prefers furniture with doors – cupboards, wardrobes, buffets, etc etc). Rather a revelation for a wife who loves books (yes, @jobeaz, the physical variety! I haven’t really warmed to the whole idea of eBooks yet!) and who has lots and lots… and lots of them.

Never mind; I’m adaptable. So I started planning how to ‘de-clutter’ (without spending too much money, of course!) and this meant that yesterday was furniture-moving day. I re-worked the girl’s bedroom (Miss 7 got the shock of her life when she got home from school!), Mr 3’s bedroom, our bedroom, the dining room, and have started on the lounge room. This Saturday will see two large pieces of lounge room furniture moved to my in-laws, to make room for the new TV/entertainment unit (not yet purchased, but it’ll be coming from IKEA) and the new lounge (again, not yet ordered, but this will be from Fantastic Furniture because I really like their ‘storage’ lounges) – oh, and the orientation of the furniture in the lounge will also change 90%. So it’ll be (eventually) like a whole new house. (And maybe that’s why it’s been over 15 years since I visited IKEA!)

So that was yesterday. On the work front, I discovered last night that a tweet I sent got retweeted by three people.
https://twitter.com/BloxhamMkting/status/224774127473541120
One of these accounts has over 19,000 followers! And a reply tweet I got form another of these people (in South Africa, by the way) said that she loved my link; and that her friends were currently sharing it around on Facebook. So how COOL is social media!!!

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#blogjune Life Random thoughts

Challenges

What is it about challenges that makes us want to rise to them? Is it the thoughts of bettering ourselves? Is it that we have a measurable amount of achievement? Or is it, in a more public challenge, that we have an audience to try to impress?
Whatever the reason, I wondered if everyone is like me, once the challenge is over. Case in point: #blogjune. Here, on this blog, I attempted to post an entry on every day in June. For the most part, I was successful in meeting this challenge. In addition to blogging daily, I also wanted to try and blog before 10am. I wasn’t always successful at this, however I was pretty proud at how many times I *did* manage to!

And overall, in the whole #blogjune challenge, I think I only missed one day. And seeing as I caught that day up, on the following day, and I also posted an extra one on the “100 books meme” that inspired me, I feel as though I achieved in this challenge far better than I had hoped for. Especially when you compare it to last year’s #blogjune challenge, where I missed  about a dozen days, and decided to try and catch them all up, right at the end of the month!
However… that was then, this is now. The blogging challenge finished last Saturday. And, in this public arena, it is now obvious that I haven’t posted on here since then. So, what is it about the ‘challenge’, that makes us want to rise to it? Why could I blog daily every day for 30 days, and yet as soon as the challenge finished, find myself too busy to continue the habit? It’s a bit sad, really. (And thanks for the nudge, @joeyroo1, for even getting this one posted!)

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#blogjune Bloxham Marketing Life Random thoughts Work

Parenting

Do all parents second-guess themselves? Or is it just me?

I started this #blogjune challenge intending to explore the journey I’m on as a mum of a newly diagnosed autistic son. But today, I spent close to an hour in the emergency waiting room of Caboolture Hospital with Miss 4. She’d been at family day care with Mr 3, playing on one of their scooters, had fallen off and sliced open a deep gash just below her mouth. So she and I spent time at the hospital, while Mr 3 played back at Day Care, and my work continued to pile up back at St Paul’s, where I had decided to have a rare, kid-free day, to catch up on the mountain of work not yet completed.
And that’s when I started thinking about the whole ‘mother guilt’ thing again.

Miss 4 is with me 7 days a week, with the exception of ‘grandma playgroup’ when she’s not allowed to come to Mr 3’s ECDP. It’s very very very rare for me to organize a day of childcare for her (and Mr 3) because not only is it rather expensive, but also because Mr 3, being autistic, doesn’t like changes to his routine.
So when I do, and she gets hurt, I wonder ‘would that have happened if she had been with me?’ (No, because I don’t like scooters because they’re dangerous, so we don’t have any here at home… but that’s not to say that she could have hurt herself some other way…) I wonder ‘should I have put her in care today, or just kept her with me… seeing as I didn’t get the work done that I wanted to, anyway’. I wonder ‘what sort of mother puts her child in care when, really, she doesn’t absolutely *have* to?’ I wonder ‘this is the second time in the space of a few months that Miss 4 has ended up in Emergency… is this coincidence, or an indicator of something deeper, that I should be aware of but am not due to my busyness?’ I wonder how I’m going to catch up on the work I’m missing out on doing. I wonder if by some strange turn of events, @fionawb might just so happen to wander down to Emergency, and we might meet IRL. I wonder why the Caboolture Emergency is so drastically different to Nambour Emergency; where we were late last year… or Caloundra Emergency; where I’ve been with Miss 7… and Mr 3. I wonder if other mums visit Emergencies as much as I seem to; or if my kids are just clumsier than average; or if I’m one of those hypochondriac mothers who’s always imagining medical conditions on her kids.
And (as an aside) I wonder where the St Paul’s ad is, that we’ve been paying for for over a year now, that is meant to be playing in the Caboolture Hospital Emergency waiting room…)

Anyway… that was my afternoon. I want to thank my online friends for their messages and tweets wishing Miss 4 well. Your support means so much to me!!! It’s unexpected, and therefore all the more treasured. Thanks for being there for me! You guys rock!!!
So now, it’s late, and my inbox is still beckoning. I love my work… but can see that the day is coming where I’m going to need some staff…

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#blogjune Life momentous events More about me Random thoughts

It’s funny…

Three-and-a-bit years ago, Mr 3 was “born” by elective C-section. On this day, back in 1974, I came into the world the very same way. It’s funny, hey?!

Have a great day, dear readers!

 

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Life Random thoughts

And again…

So I’m back at the mechanics again today, currently sitting in the waiting room with Miss 4 and Mr 3.

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It was just yesterday that my car got serviced, and we discovered that I’d been driving around with a fairly large nail through the rubber of the front tyre. Praise God it hadn’t pierced the wrong thing, or I might not be sitting here right now!
But here I am, listening on the kids’ gaming, and waiting for all of the wheels to be balanced. They’d only balanced the front ones, and Hubby noticed a shudder once past 100k an hour. And since we do a *lot* of highway driving, it was back to the mechanics this morning to get it sorted out. This time, however, with kids in tow. Which is where having iDevices comes in SOOOOOOO handy! Miss 4 is being a squirrel on ‘Nuts!’, and Mr 3, (hat on his head, because that’s what the picture in his head of ‘going out’ tells him he must have) is trying to get Swampy enough water for his bath on ‘Where’s my Water’, because he finished ‘Snakes and Ladders’ and in the Lite version, you only get one game per day.
I must admit, having digital babysitters for the kids really makes life easier, sometimes!

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Life Random thoughts

On being cold…

Just for the record, I am a wuss. I like my warmth and I like my comfort. I said to hubby, earlier this morning, there’s no way I could live any further south than we are right now. I couldn’t hack it!
So, after bundling our three cherubs into Hubby’s car before 7.30am, to drop my car off before 8 for a service, all I could think about was how cold I was! (I even tweeted about it. That’s a little embarrassing!)
So I’ve decided. If I win Lotto one day, and have no more financial worries, I’m moving to Hawaii. Although, I love Australia… So maybe I’ll just move up to North Queensland. Yep. That’ll do. So… Anyone got a winning lotto ticket that they don’t want?

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Life Random thoughts

The perfect Mother’s Day present

I know, it’s been a while. Hectic doesn’t even begin to describe it! But today I just *had* to stop and share this one with you, dear readers.

You see, I’ve been having Mother’s Days for several years now. My first was pretty special. Hubby splashed out and I received a beautiful (and expensive!) necklace and earrings. Since then, gifts have ranged from the ‘that’s lovely’ to the ‘hmmm… I guess he’s been busy?!’ but this year, Miss 7 was there to egg him on, and to think, really think, about what I would like.

And he got it right! The perfect gift! (And I made sure I gave lots and lots of positive feedback, so I get the same next year…)

One packet from each of out three cherubs! That should keep me going for a while…

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family anecdotes Life

Help needed, please…

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I’ve been aware for a while now, the differences between girls and boys. According to Miss 7, girls have eyelashes. And this has been the case for the last few years. In fact, the colouring in she did just last week (pictured) wasn’t a female bird… until she made it one! Isn’t it great, the way kids see things!
But something that Miss 4 said this morning has me stumped. And if anyone has any clue as to it’s interpretation, I’d love some help with it!
“Mummy, some girls can be good girls, and they have lips. Some boys can be good boys, and they have lips. But some boys can be very naughty, and some girls can be very very naughty, and none of them have lips.”
What the?

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Life Random thoughts Technology

What am I worth?

From time to time, I google my name. Being probably the only ‘Ceridwyn Bloxham’ that’s alive on the face of this entire planet, I’m pretty sure that all search results on the first couple of pages are actually going to relate to me in some way. (And that’s pretty cool…!) But it hit me the other day that I’d never googled “KRidwyn” – my new(ish) twitter handle, and what I’m going by more and more recently, because it’s just easier, phonetically speaking.

SoI did. I ran a google search on KRidwyn – and again, most of the first page or so related to me (again, that’s pretty cool!) and seeing as I mainly use KRidwyn on twitter, most of the search results were for twitter analytics tools. ‘That’s fine with me,’ I thought. But then one caught my eye. It put a price on my account. Finally, a monetary value on my worth as a digital citizen! (Yes, there’s always Klout – where I’m hovering around a 48 – and I’ve played with, and given up on, 20ft as a way of measuring my influence… but this was a MONETARY value! And it was for $116.95!!!)

Here is a screenshot of the relevant section of the webpage. And yes, my value’s gone down in the last two or so days. I’d be sad if I wasn’t so bemused by it all!

Also interesting: you can input other people’s @twitter handles, and get their results. So I did. Apparently @PeteCashmore (at Mashable) is worth a shade under $40K US, @JeffBullas (a digital marketer in Sydney) is worth over $41K, and @JasonYormark (a marketing VP in Seattle) is worth over $62K! (And Jason Yormark has sent less than 4,000 tweets! I’m pretty jealous of that…! But I’ve tweeted more than @PeteCashmore… hmmm…)

So – want to try it? The site’s called “SNPros” (short for “Social Networking Professionals) and the image credit for today’s piece is at http://www.snpros.com/twitter/KRidwyn

Have a lovely day, all!

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family anecdotes Life Random thoughts Uncategorized

Wise furniture choices

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It’s now coming up five years since we moved from Landsborough. We had built a four bed 2 bath brick and tile home there, back in the year 2000. After a couple of years, we extended it and enclosed a large patio, creating an entertainment room. We furnished this room with a lovely 6 piece outdoor setting – wicker-look chairs and tempered glass table.
Fast forward seven years and you see us moving house. To a cute (read tiny) place that definitely would not fit all of our furniture… well, not if we wanted to fit in there too. So we halved our furniture, keeping the outside setting and giving the dining table and chairs to Neighbours Aid Community Stores. Reason being, even though it was larger, the glass tabletop helped to not make our new dining / lounge area too crammed – and the wicker look fitted in with the holiday feel of our new place.
Fast forward again, to April 2012. Mr 3 has decided to develop the habit of spitting / dribbling any unwanted food out of his mouth – in full mouthfuls. Outside furniture copes well with this. Just take the chair outside, hose it off, wait half an hour, and then everything’s hunky-dory again. Bread, milk, cheese, tomato sauce, tuna, soggy chips, ice cream – it really doesn’t matter.
I was thinking about this, this morning after my little man decided to experiment with tipping his large cup of milk all over his right leg, and then screaming because he was surprised by the consequence.
Because it doesn’t matter if I hose off one chair, two chairs, or all six chairs in one go – they’ll still all be fine in about half an hour. And think that’s pretty cool.