Fluffy of activity in ThePalace(OfLove) tonight. Bessie is in major decluttering mode as she prepares to fly the nest!

She and Hansel are moving in together and sign the lease and get the keys for their new place tomorrow!

They’re moving into a cute little apartment about 10 min away from us (1.5 hours away on a Saturday morning taking the usual Inner West traffic into consideration).

Such adorable poppets! I’m excited for them!

Her decluttering has unearthed a whole bunch of garments I’ve passed on to her over the years which I’m retrieving from the cast-offs pile. “Oh, I’d completely forgotten about that giant orange jumper!” “Did I really knit that complicated grey hat?”

And I’m making piles of household items I I can cast off to her. “Here, have all of my cake tins!”

Circle of life.

I suspect we’ll also be in a frenzy of activity all weekend.

2990 days.

Such is our arid country, that it has taken me around six months to bust out the newly acquired red raincoat and un-blogged new(ish)** red $20 rain boots.

Sure, if I wear the boots, I also have to lug a pair of shoes into the Project Sulfur offices in the backpack, but it is well worth it for the reward of dry feet!

(I still resemble an aged toddler, but I remain unconcerned).

xxx

**My calves being just too chunky (muscled?) for my beloved hunters – since gifted to Bessie.

You could use 6,400 Qantas frequent flyer points to purchase a flight to the Gold Coast

OR

For an additional 1,390 points, you could get yourself a qantas branded keep-cup instead

However would you decide?

2992 days.

Yesterday I discovered that the library also offers audiobooks for borrowing via the BorrowBox app.

Sure, much like the physical library they don’t have every title you might want. And you need to get on a waiting list for popular books. But this is an exciting development! Listening to a book makes dull chores pass much more quickly and is an essential accompaniment to knitting.

I’ve just started listening to Virginia Duigan: The Precipice which I’m enjoying a great deal.

I’m likely retain my audible account, but this is a really great option for those occasions where my credits are exhausted.

2993 days.

This week I will:

+ post birthday card to maiden aunt
+ practice Japanese every morning
+ drink 3x bottles of water a day
+ ride exercise bike 3x
+ knit 10 rows of the impossible jumper
+ cook two new dishes
+ attend climate strike rally with Bessie

The second instalment of my midlife crisis crafting project saw me at an art glass class today.

I’ve never had any compelling need to work in glass, but I saw this class on the sydney community college site and I was intrigued enough to sign up.

I adored it and had much more fun than I expected. The class was a diverse small group of 8, there was such a cheerful and positive energy and it was super-interesting to see everyone’s design process and how they worked. I was chatting with a woman who drove up from the south coast to be there and we agreed that there is really something wonderful about undertaking creative pursuits in a group setting. My crafting has always tended to be exceptionally solo, so I really am keen to do more of this.

We were all pretty much novices and after an intro, we first learned to cut with glass cutters on (cheap) plain sheet glass. I could not resist arranging my bits in pretty patterns even though they were destined for the bin.

i kind of wish i had kept the little scene

After we were confident at cutting, it was onto the hideously expensive bullseye art glass. We were given a plain glass tile as a base, there were jars of glass dust, containers of tiny glass fragments, and there were drawers and drawers of small and medium-sized pieces of all colours to play with. We pretty much had complete freedom to design whatever we liked.

First we each made a couple of sushi plates. I stuck to pretty simple colour-field designs, but spent forever fiddling with the little bits.

Once we were feeling fairly confident, we moved onto a larger platter. It took me a good while to first gather the bits from the various containers, then arrange them, and then glue them down (thank TheUniverse for a steady hand and a pair of tweezers!)

co-ordinating with my reading glasses

The firing will take around a week – hopefully they’ll survive the process!

They’ll get a little melty and slumpy in the kiln and I’m super keen to see how they turn out.

Still considering what the next class should be. I’m super keen to do resin, but the times aren’t really working for me. Nor are the times for ceramics. Weaving?

2995 days.

Current favourite tee-shirt

still hip and relevant

This shirt from well spotted – custom printed on a ladies medium.

2996 days.

I think I spoke rather too soon about my laptop no longer killing ThePalace(OfLove) wifi and internet.

As soon as I switched it on this evening everything froze, rather ruining a bunch of streaming that was going on. Rats! Perhaps that new computer is in my future after all.

xxx

I was intending to post about my delightful Wednesday, but it is probably best told with photographs and it is a beast to insert them here. Invariably they display much too large despite my resizing.

I’ll give half of it a bash.

I worked from home yesterday, but ducked out for lunch at the beach with a mum I met a couple of years ago at a series of workshops Don and I attended with Joe/Frank for young adults on the spectrum. She and I left the last session agreeing to catch up for coffee and then a couple of weeks ago I realised two years had passed. Oops.

So as part of my get-out-and-do-more and extend-socialising-beyond-SML, I reached out.

Gosh! It was really, really great to have a conversation that did not involve SML in any way. And it was absolutely refreshing to chat with someone who is like-minded and also has similar(ish) parenting experiences – it’s a relatively rare combination.

The setting was pretty spectacular too.

We have plans to repeat.

It’s fascinating to me how you can reduce your universe to about 10 people without even noticing!

Need to take action on that.

2997 days.

I had my hair cut very short in June 2011 and I adored it for many years! So simple and easy and cute!

Alas, what was kicky and sporty in my mid-40s started to become kind of ageing in my late-40s and I really felt like I needed a change.

nov 2017

At the year one update, I could squeeze it into a tiny bun.

At the almost year-two update I can squeeze it into a larger, messier bun – which is pretty much how I wear it day to day. It is absolutely dead-straight, somewhat ratty and rather in need of attention – a trim, a style, a something. I haven’t had it cut for two years, save for some trimming of the back in the early days of growing out.

I took these photos a couple of weeks ago after pulling it from the usual bun because I was delighted by the bounce – which lasted about 20 minutes before it was straighter than straight again.

i wish for this much volume!

The length is having the desired effect though, even Joe/Frank (never one to notice such things) commented that I look younger with hair.

I think this is the longest it has been for around 17 years – even before I went super-short it usually didn’t reach my shoulders. Before that, I think I might have been pregnant with Joan?

Onward to year 3!

Then perhaps a review.

2998 days.

Mental health though?

Surprisingly good! Possibly even great.

I had lunch with Knut last Friday and he told me this is the happiest he has ever seen me. We’ve known each other, what? 5 years?

I’ve been doing quite a bit of work on this – not necessarily in a terribly structured way, but there has been a lot of thinking thoughts. Being located in another office with physical and operational distance from the utterly dysfunctional and chaotic SML has provided an excellent opportunity to do this thinking.

So much of my identity has been bound up in that place – for almost 15 years! Endless people-pleasing, endless praise-seeking, endless (endless!) thinking and ruminating about it. And for what exactly? I do have an excellent job, I’m paid well and have a wonderful team – but none of that is predicated on being a 100%-SML-bot.

I realised that my life has been that 100%-SML-bot for quite a long while now.

Thankfully I’m starting to create some much healthier boundaries. I’m beginning to accept that there things at SML that I cannot change or fix and to make peace with those things (this doesn’t mean at all that I have to like those things!)

more of this

I’m trying to extend my boundaries – reaching out to people to catch-up, making sure I have a proper lunch break. There is absolutely nothing in the SML universe that cannot wait for at least 30 minutes.

2999 days.