Organisational skills? What organisational skills?

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What’s been happening at Wannabe Farmstead? Feels like a lot. I was out with the dogs at the oval when it occurred to me:

• I can sort out and adjust training “schedules” in my head fast from observing the dogs while working with them
• I can work out learning styles and interests of the kids from observation and interaction and work out where to go and things to do that they might find interesting
• I can work around family stuff with minimal dramas
• I can do things for clients on time (provided they get me what I need when I say I need it by)
• I cannot organise my own way out of a paper bag

I should probably do something about that last point.

Summer rain

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It’s the hottest driest summer ever in Australia (except in Queensland and northern WA where they’re experiencing floods, and meanwhile in Europe where they’re having longest coldest winters with craziest snowfall). Here in Perth most of our rain happens in winter with drips and drabs here and there in late autumn and early spring. We don’t usually get rain in summer. The last few days I’ve felt quite at home while a large number of my friends have been complaining of the oppressive, stifling, terrible humidity.

Officially with the school aged kids

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When my little big boy and his agemates hit kindy age (normal 4 year old kindy), I commented to a long time friend from back when Southies (better known now as Perth Natural Learning Network, website in the works and there is a Facebook group

) first started up sometime near the beginning of 2007 that their social life had suddenly exploded with everyone’s kids having birthday parties and playdates and whatnot. She quite enthusiastically said yeh, she loved it. I also find it enjoyable, though at the time for me it was more of a conscious noting of the fact that I had a child that was getting towards the stage of “big” (ie school aged) kid. I was slowly but surely moving out of the realm of “mum of babies and toddlers” and into “mum of big kids” land.

The obligatory silly season writeup

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Mostly for family, as I mentioned in the last post we’re usually with one of our families at Christmas time. This year is a rare occurrence, the last time it happened was almost 6 years ago when I, at the end of gestating 5yo, decided flat out that I was not going anywhere.

Firstly, let it be known that we have no Christmas tree (though I am seriously contemplating one of these Fruut trees). My family, who love their Christmas trees, may or may not be aghast to discover this was the best I could do:

Christmas time, mistletoe and wine, and slightly different this year

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The lovely Ursula (also known as SulaMoon) over at deviantART gave me and another friend of hers pearwood a dragon for Christmas.

I think it’s agonisingly cute. Ursula is an amazing artist.

Just on the subject of Christmas critters, I did a whole blog post on my Christmas present but that was wiped when my host got itself taken out.

Border protection

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A couple of weeks or so ago we received a mailout from Senator Judith Adams, Liberal Senator for Western Australia, Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate. There is one thing I hate above all else, and that is fearmongering. I am all for intelligent discussion and debate and being exposed to the many facets of a situation so that one can make an informed decision as to which side of the fence they are going to sit on so to speak. I have a rabid hatred of SHOUTING TO MAKE YOUR POINT AND BEING RIGHT BECAUSE YOU SAY IT LOUDER THAN EVERYONE ELSE and abuse of emotive language to drum up a reaction.

On housework

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I’m really not surprised the kids haven’t bee wanting to help with the housework lately.

Firstly I’ve been yelling at them almost constantly. Secondly there’s been this pervasive, pointless obsession with “getting shit done” to the point where my lovely husband would much rather force them to watch a video and “get shit done” as quicky as possible because he’s sick of [everything] and keeps repeating the “getting shit done” mantra when I point out that most of the reason kids probably don’t feel so inclined to help with the housework was precisely because they weren’t allowed to and then al of a sudden were forced to rather than growing into it as part of life and how you live in a family unit.

Rejigging flux

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It’s probably a good thing I’m used to constant flux, it has on occasion driven me mad but I think I need it, considering several attempts to have anything above the most basic of basic routines results in more chaos and me actually going mad. Considering the amount of Stuff going on in my head I’ve decided to relegate logging of the banal crap and reminders to do Stuff to djinn (my iPhone, yes it and both my computers and my car have names and personalities) which seems to have left the part of my brain I’m aware of using more room to do some really weird stuff.

Slack, busy

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Yes, I haven’t written for ages. No that’s not likely to change :)

Erm. Got me a notebook to see if I can get any better at this recording thing next year, practising while Tiny is kindy aged. Also still working on ze homeschooling site, though that got pushed back again as my sister and I had a couple of jobs drop into our laps (one decent sized).

High stress

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Been a very bad parent lately. It’s one of those things. We lost one of our cats to a car (nobody cares what you think, you are not and never will be a good enough driver to be speeding along normal roads) and we bought a new house which we will be moving into in 12 months after settlement. My clandestine operation is still in full swing though I’m feeling a tad stressed seeing as I may need to change plans partway through as I have no idea what the money situation is going to be like, specially seeing as the person I need to email me hasn’t yet.