The Daily Grind

Life just rumbles on in the Bennett family. Poppy has passed on, Heidi has been born, Poppy has been farewelled in a home-town funeral where the comment in the Eulogy that 'you cannot chose where you were born but you can choose where you die' certainly rang true.

Since then, life has rumbled on in a somewhat automated manner in our house. I am not sure whether that's a sign of potential post-partum fallout to come or just some stored up grief but I am sure time will tell. It has been one heck of a start to the year, for sure, when you add in broken limbs and drug overdoses. Yes, can you believe that one sixth of the year has already passed?

In the mean time this evening I find myself wishing my brain didn't feel so much like the gooey fudge that one can buy in Kangaroo Valley (NSW) because I know inside me I have a very strong opinion and multiple trains of thought when it comes to our proposed National Curriculum and the simple lack of appropriate training for our future school teachers.

Please someone flag me to write about this when I am more myself and less overtired, sleep disturbed mummy!

Anyway, for those who may be curious here are a few highlights that I have looked at today:

Our five bookshelves are overflowing again and it is clear that I again need to do some clearing out. I have decided this time around to list my books on Fishpond for sale.

Last Sunday I did my first 'bread run' which means collecting unsold bread from the staff member of a well known Aussie bakery chain and repackaging it. The bread, in the first instance, gets divided up into bags for families in need at three local schools and are handed out by the each school's chaplain.

Yesterday I found myself flying for the first time with Tiger Airways out of the pure stubborn opinion that I should not have to pay up to $800 for economy seats for a return trip to Melbourne for a funeral. I must say it was not as bad as I dreaded - it seemed that you acknowledge that they have cut-throat cut off times and plan for it then average Joe Citizen should survive the trip unscathed.

So, I have been having some speed issues with my web site and went to have a hunt to see if I could find the culprit. Whilst I was sniffing around I noticed that this is my first >1Gb month for bandwidth. So, which one of you is stealing it, eh?

Seriously though, my statistics are looking pretty crazy. My number of visitors has slowly settled down again but I have still had almost 59,000 visitors in the last year. That's a fair schwag of people when you work out that it is several hundred people per day.

Perhaps I am suffering from too much time in the business sector. I am amazed at the pressure exuded now on small business owners to 'blog their way to success' using their blog to demonstrate their prowess to potential customers and win them over as clients.

It is amazing though how hard core the people who take up their gauntlet are. They make bold claims about their success from this and many ply the pressure onto their clients and readership to take up and do the same. These past few months I have felt this pressure immensely.

So here is the tag-able question:

If you were to become the eighth dwarf from Snow White - what would they call you and why?

For me, I am certainly I would be called something like 'sigh-sy' because I often 'sigh' for no reason at all beyond stretching my chest muscles and my jaw. It is a long standing habit that has my mother-in-law ask what is wrong each and every time I do it. I never knew that a sigh could indicate a problem before the pattern of her asking me this became as established as each sigh in itself.

It was 9.30pm and all but three of Peter's birthday guests had departed. Auntie Berocca was one of the remaining few, sitting on the steps in our lounge room she noticed something shiny between the brickwork and the steps. From that observation she managed to extract the Ratatouille DVD fallen between the two surfaces from the mere one centimeter that was exposed.

I pondered as to whether other DVDs that have gone astray could be down there. She said that if they were there was no way to get them because they would be under the stairs forever. Curious, I wondered if there was timber between the risers. If not, then I could potentially find those DVDs.

I lifted the carpet and, drat, there was full timber panels behind each riser. But hang on a minute, I looked more closely to notice that the steps were fully stained and varnished. My goodness why were they being hidden from view?

So, with a little determination, last night I lifted the carpet, removed the underfelt, staples and carpet gripper from the stairs with a little help from Berocca. Other than requiring a little TLC from the nail and staple holes and a few marks from where the chisel scratched in removing the carpet gripper it looks just beautiful. With just a little determination I feel that I have restored my own little piece of the building.

Now to work out how to complete the restoration...

What is it with my brain when I am on holidays?

I use distraction purposefully during work times as a means of procrastination but when, after a week and a half of downtime, I tick over into holiday mode my brain sort of goes a little haywire.

All week I have been meaning to work on Baby Steps Resources but for some reason I just never got there. There was lots of other happenings, mostly involving the use of my laptop whilst simultaneously ignoring children's requests for DVD's and the like. (Well, their father was home also).

So, what happened to my week? I caught up on 500 odd emails from whilst I was away, worked on Organic Learning, got myself moving on the Home Educator's Picnic in the Park on Saturday week, I jumped onto Facebook and even had some time for Essential Baby.

I was also stoked to be able to add Australian Secondhand Homeschool Curriculum and Books as an official partner to Organic Learning. They are an excellent resource for us and I thank Jill and her family for all the work they have done on their forum as well as looking forward to see their service expand to more in the home education community in the coming year. Thanks Jill!

Hopefully, I'll improve my 'two months between blog posts' situation soon...

Last night, or moreso this morning, I crawled into be at half past five. (I got passionate about finishing something I started eight months ago, spend eight hours on it and still haven't finished!) I had only just started to drift off to sleep when woken by a huge clap of thunder followed promptly followed by hail. Dutifully, I jumped out of bed and brought the dog in as she gets awfully distraught when there is a storm. In that time two more monster shots of lightning and claps of thunder in close succession and hail turns to a torrential downpour. Knowing that the dog is safe in the laundry I crawl back into bed as another clap occurs. As I laid myself down the rain stopped and it was clear once more. It was over already - what a waste of effort that was!

The lesson learnt was that if I had gone to bed as usual I would already have been gearing to get up anyway and it wouldn't have been a disruption. Such is life...