Friday, October 23, 2009

Waiting for the When.


I, like a close friend of mine, am coming to an awful gut renching realisation that I need to get a life. I need to do something to pique my interest more, that explores the foundations of me, who I am and who I want to be. I'm hoping to God it's not the samedom of being on maternity leave and having each week the same that is getting to me, as I love being off work and having time to scrapbook, organise or do nothing. Since moving to Hedland, everything in my life is When. When we move to Gero. When we get a brand new house. When the girls are bigger.

I don't feel there is any point spending money on nice furniture when the girls are small and spill food and drink on it all, when Saxon as a dodgy bladder and wees on everything and when we are just going to have to pay to move it all to Gero when we do go, rather than buy it when we get there and leave our current crap behind at the dump.


We desperately need a new bed. I've had our current base with slats under the mattress since I was in Perth and it's old and rickety now. The slats move and the mattress is so bad I have almost a constant backache. Going to the chiropractor does no good. I want to upgrade our next bed to a King Size and I don't see the point of getting one now as it will not fit in our bedroom. Let alone a whole new bedroom suite and actual wardrobes to match. So we'll buy a new mattress and hope that will cover us until we do move.

Next year we are going to Phuket for our honeymoon, and our plan is to go to Surfers Paradise and take the girls in the next few years after that. But while Devon and Cassidy are so small, there's probably no point as they won't be able to ride on anything and they'll be too small to remember anyway. So we'll probably stick to travelling around WA, although we've promised ourselves a trip to Darwin before we leave the Pilbara to see what all the fuss is about. All our friends go to America. But those friends don't have toddlers or babies.

Last year we got a new fridge, knowing a new baby was on the way and we'd need the room. This month we bought new IKEA shelving for our CDs and DVDs. And unfortunately, as fantastic as they are, they just make our other old furniture look worse.

We've bought an investment property in Geraldton; settlement was just yesterday. This makes me feel like we are finally adults and are taking care of things financially. Yet we are tearing our hair out over finding a decent tenant to go in the house. The stress is unsurmountable. I keep thinking I must ring the property manager, then I just ignore it because I can't handle dealing with it. We have life insurance but Shane doesn't even have a will.

So I feel like for nearly 5 years now, I've been putting everything on hold, waiting for When. And as you can see above, I have plenty of excuses why. Like my wedding dress, common sense overrules what I really want. Because what I really want is to move to Geraldton now and be with my sister, knowing my parents will soon follow and I can't do that. That would mean doing without Shane as he would then have to do fly-in, fly-out work; the money's just too good. And I can't do without him.

So I balance it. I justify why I go without now with what is yet to come, and buy small, crappy things to make do, hoping to God I get the chance to do the big things later. Funnily enough, with refinancing my unit, we actually have the money there to be able to do these things too. Am I just in a rut? Because this rut has been gnawing at me for 4 and a half years.

A few weeks ago, my cousins 21 year old son committed suicide. I hadn't met James as an adult; I only remember him as a dark haired little kid running around with us all at the beach. He was so cute, and pictures of him as a adult showing a really good looking guy, someone I would have been glad to know in my family. But now he's gone and I had to put a death date on someone young in my family tree. What if something were to happen while I waited for the When? I don't want to regret sitting around.

I feel like I live my life waiting for the When to happen. I'm 37 next year. When is my life actually going to start? When will I have the nice house, room to scrap, and a comfortable lounge and bed? A big kitchen with a dishwasher and beautiful patio area? Built in robes, going to the movies and coffee with my sister and big family Christmases without 40 degree temperatures? Contentment and achievement in my life? When?

Friday, October 2, 2009

Doctor in the House!

Dresses done and Invitations to think of.


I have had a very lucky score on the wedding front by finding the girls flower girl dresses in one of the last places I would look. I'd been investigating some online but was worried without seeing them myself first.

Jodie was in Best and Less in Gero looking for a dress for Tayla and sent me a text of 2 dresses they had there which would be perfect. As you can see, Cassidy's dress has the gold sash belt which pretty much is the same shade as the gold of my dress. The embroidered flowers all over match the flowers on Devon's dress, which is in black and white. As the wedding party will be dressed in black, gold, cream and white, they'll both match perfectly.

The total of the dresses was $63.00 and Jodie sent them the day she bought them, so I had them 2 days later. Good old Australia Post. So a major part of the girls preparation is done now. I will need to get tights, hairpieces, shoes and cardigans, depending on the weather, which will be easy enough done next year.
I've been starting to think about my invitations too, as I want to start on them in the new year. I already have some gold edged RSVP cards to include and some shell picture cards to use for decoration, so I am going to start planning how to put the program together. Yes, I said program! I'm including the invitation, the wishing well poem, the list of accommodation and the RSVP card and envelope, so I decided to put it all together in a mini booklet. It will look tidier than sending 4 separate items in one envelope. I also have some little tidbits to include, such as the fact that we're not allowed to use confetti or flower petals at the ceremony (public area) and also I got the idea from The Knot website that I could do a little list of my something old, something new, etc for people to know.
I have already ordered some address stickers online as I'm running out of my current ones, so I just made sure they were in the colours of gold and white and I'll use them for my RSVP cards too. It was only $14.95 for 140, so they were only 10c each, not bad.
My friend Andrea (who got married in Broome in July) has offered to help me make them, so now it's just a matter of buying some flash A4 card and designing the layout. Lucky for me I have a printer of my own to use. I want them to be inexpensive but not look it, so we'll see. Luckily in Port Hedland, The Emporium carry a lot of paper supplies and metallic envelopes and the like, so I should be able to get supplies no worries.
So things are bobbling along. In a lot of ways I wish the wedding was sooner so I could get more stuff sorted, but I know I should stop wishing my life away! TTFN.