Whinge, moan, rant, complain, self-pity

There. You have been warned about the content of this post and may proceed at your own risk.

The rollercoaster of life feels like it has been on a high-speed descent the last few days; i’m hoping that soon it will start to climb back up the hill again.  The first thing – my SO’s father went into hospital last week and, it transpires, won’t be coming out again.  He has a particularly complex and nasty form of Parkinson’s that has included things like dementia, and now his body is slowly shutting down.  i’m not quite sure how much time he has left – maybe a few days, maybe a couple of weeks – so at the moment every time the phone rings i am anticipating “that” phonecall.  We went to see him on Saturday and it was shocking and very very sad. my step-daughter cried.  On Monday morning an alarm went off on my phone to remind me that it was his birthday.  Monday was not a good day.

Saturday was also the first class for this degree that i’m doing, the MLIS (Masters in Library and Information Studies.)  It was a double class, so that took up half the day.  i drifted off completely during the second half of the class; we had a lot of reading to do for it and i hadn’t had time to do it all, so woke up at 5am to finish it all.  Result – most of it has gone straight in one ear and out the other.  i’m having a real attitude problem with this degree; i already have one Masters degree and really don’t want another one, and i really really don’t want to go back to writing essays and being graded on my contributions in class; i’m doing it solely because without this degree i can’t go any further with my career.  Somehow i have to get past the resentment that i’m feeling about losing most of my free time for the next four years; otherwise its going to be a spectacular disaster.

On top of all this we are trying to launch a new service at work and it is running behind schedule.  At 9am i was sitting at my desk practically in tears.  i don’t like stress, and don’t cope well with it.  In the past couple of years i have developed a specific reaction to stress, which is to hyperventilate.  Not big, gasping, head-in-a-paper-bag breaths, but just a minor change to my breathing that is too small for me or anyone else to notice.  Thing is, after a couple of days of that i start to feel incredibly tired, get really upset very easily, feel like i can’t cope with anything, and if i’m really lucky i might even have a panic attack.  So this morning i realised what’s been going on with me, and if i can keep an eye on my breathing i should feel a whole lot better in a day or two, and this overwhelming feeling of complete inadequacy will pass.  i will once again feel like someone who is capable of writing an essay on the digital divide.

i had a grand, motivating plan for this year – i will be 40 in November, and that was going to be the thing that would keep me going to the gym regularly, make me start to eat healthily, and eventually lose a whole lot of weight (preferably about 30kg/60 pounds.)  Then i injured my achilles tendon, the whole thing of studying part-time and working fulltime started to bite…and i’ve been to the gym maybe once in the past two weeks.  i’ve been drinking too much wine, eating lots of sugar, and probably gaining weight.  So far i’m not feeling any motivation to change things back to the way they were meant to be going.

ok, that’s probably enough self-pity.  To cheer me up (and you), here’s a photo of little Freddy Bear who I made quite some time ago and rejected as a failure.  Then one day i happened to see him and suddenly he spoke to me on some level, and now i think he is the cutest thing ever.  Is it ok to think that a piece of your own work is just completely awesome?!

 

Ssssshh!


Enter the ICHC online Poker Cats Contest!

THAT was the sound of my brain gently sizzling as i attempt to force it back into academic mode by reading page after page after page after page after page about the Information Society.  In other words – i have my first class for my first paper this weekend, and after not studying for several years it is proving a bit of an effort to get through the readings!  i’m beginning to fear that my chardonnay habit may have killed off just a few too many brain cells.

As noted in the comments on the previous entry, last weekend did not go as planned thanks to the weather.  But it was no big deal.  At least i FINALLY finished my mobile for the swap i signed up for at Elsie Marley’s blog.  My photography sucks – it was getting a bit dark – but i’m pleasantly surprised at how well-made it looks.

Oooh Oooh ooh i have to go, my LAPTOP HAS JUST ARRIVED!!! SQUEEEEEEE!
 

 

Thanks!

To the kind people who have made comments – it has been really unexpected and rather thrilling!  I mean, the blogosphere is so big now that i feel like it is a small miracle to get noticed at all, let alone so soon after i began.  So, what plans for the weekend?  My parents are away on holiday for a month so we are going to stay at their house on Waiheke Island  and have a lovely couple of days free of flatmates and teenagers.  (My SO and the Teenager have sorted things out and are back to being amicable again, phew!  She is not a bad kid at all – are they still kids at 17? – but rather stubborn, AND an Emo to boot – sigh!)…anyway, yes, my parents’ house has a nice view across the harbour and you can watch the weather changing and the boats coming and going, and i intend to watch Hogfather on dvd and work on my 2nd Inebriated Bunny Hat in crochet.  A friend and i are doing Round the Bays next month, which is a huge local fun run/walk that attracts about 70,000 people every year, and we decided to dress up a bit this time.  For my first attempt i managed to crochet the whole thing in the wrong stitch and it came out twice the size it should have!  (photos to follow.) 

So i hope everybody else has something equally enjoyable planned. Somehow i feel like a post won’t be complete without a photo, especially when i look at all the craft blogs and see the lovely photography; so here’s a photo of the plants that live on my desk at work.  They sit on a couple of our old wooden card catalogue drawers, which makes me feel like i have done some useful recycling!

 

Meh-ish

It has been an unusually busy week so far with a bit more stress than i’m used to.  It was to be expected though – i’m starting my 2nd Masters degree (in library and information studies) and working fulltime, and trying to get back into the gym despite an achilles tendon injury.  The SO and the Teenager had a Major Disagreement last night too, and i’ve not had word yet on whether that has been resolved.  On the bright side, i finally paid off the bank overdraft that i’ve had since the last time i was a student!  I want to buy myself a little treat to celebrate (that’s another good thing – its a week since i was last paid and i still have $ in the bank!)…but i can’t decide what to buy.  I don’t often get “meh” about shopping, so the feeling is quite disconcerting!

Here is a photo of something i made in the weekend, and am quite pleased with; i’m a novice crocheter and this is my 1st ever amigurumi.

Isn’t it cute!  Snail doesn’t have a name yet, given that they are male and female in one package this could be a tricky one.  Oh, and the pattern is available here http://www.fortheloveofyarn.com/Issues/Spring06/patterns/spring06_snail.shtml  Those colours just make me happy.

 

i’m so excited, and i just can’t hide it….

Woah woah woah YEAH!  i just ordered my new laptop from Dell!  The 2-week delivery time sucks though.  The whole reason for getting a new laptop is because i’m starting my 2nd Masters degree via distance learning, and my poor old Asus with a 10gig hard drive, 256 mb of RAM and no cd-burner just wasn’t going to cut it.  But the 1st internet conferencing session for my 1st course is on the 25th, and i may not even have the laptop by then. :0  oh noes!

My new baby is just an Inspiron 1525, nothing fancy, but with a 160 gig hard  drive and 2gig of RAM it should be a major step up.  And i haven’t told you the most important part yet – its PINK!  Or magenta to be specific, with flowers on it.  How cool is that!  Now i’m looking for a flash drive to go with…colour co-ordination is critical here.  Heh, i sound so girly!  But i’m not, really.

i completely forgot to say Happy Valentines day (which was yesterday our time.)  So rude of me, sorry.  The Significant Other (hereafter known as the SO) and i went for dinner at a local Indian place – i paid for the food, he bought the wine and icecreams for dessert (it was HOT in there, damn this humidity, damn it to HELL!), and then we went home for a bit of you-know-what.  All very pleasant.  Normally we don’t acknowledge the day at all, but it has been quite a while since we last ate out, so what the heck.

i really AM excited, jumpy and hyped up and prone to over-use of capitals!  Hmmm, well when i get home i have to persuade Wookie the cat into a carrier so that i can somehow get her to the vets to have her mutant claw looked at.  That should be a de-funning experience for all concerned.  Still, TGIF down at this end of the world.

 

The beginning

i’ve started blogs many times before – SO many in fact that now, when i go poking around the blogging sites looking to create something new, i often can’t get the username that i want, or find that my email address is “already in use” -from an old forgotten blog that i can’t remember the log-in for!  None of them lasted very long – just like the diaries i would be given for Christmas when i was a kid.  i came across one last time i was at my parents’ house; the first couple of weeks were filled out pretty regularly in my kiddie hand-writing…then there were more and more gaps, the handwriting became my Mum’s, and by the middle of March everything went blank.i think its just laziness.  i love talking about myself online as much as anybody else, but sitting down and typing away industriously…not so much apparently.  So, THIS time i intend to focus more on one of my big sometimes passion, crafts.  Hopefully wanting to show off and share my latest creations (or receive sympathy for my latest failures!) will be a good motivator to get out into the blogosphere for real this time.  Of course this is also going to require my taking photos of said crafts, which is something else i’m not very conscientious about!  But who knows, maybe if i stick with it someone will “discover” me and want to put something i’ve designed into a book some day.  That would be super super cool.

Why purplegreen? Coz when they are together they are the most beautiful colours in the world.  In fact the only thing better than purplegreen is purplegreenturquoise, but that doesn’t look so hot as a blog name!

As usual i don’t have any really current photos of my crafts on the computer, so i will post up a couple of the teddy bears that i used to design, make and sell.  i’m not really quite sure why i stopped – i did them for about 10 years, so maybe it was just time for a change.  They were really time-consuming too -make a design, cut the (very expensive mohair) fabric, fray check,  hand-sew all the parts, install joints, stuff,  close seams, make the face, embellish, photograph, upload, sell…it took a lot out of me and i got burnt out i suppose.  That said, i still have a lot of affection for my designs, and i haven’t been able to bring myself to sell off my mohair fabric collection yet, so who knows….anyhow, hope you enjoy them!