Home of Slightly Cracked Dreams

Phew! Am I glad today’s over. It probably wasn’t a stressful day by most standards, but I don’t “do” pregnancy very well. I whinge and moan for 9 months, bascially.

So we were out the door by 9:10. Only 10 minutes late. Hubby to work, M&M & Kiki to daycare. Picked up a present from Big W for M&M’s friend whose birthday party she’s going to tomorrow. Got my nails done. Did a 40 minute round trip to deliver some catalogues. Went to a lunch/meeting. Home for food, to the library to study. Pick up Hubby, pick up kids, collapse on the bed.

But did you notice in there? I studied at the library! How amazing is it than in 90 minutes at the library, I can get more done than an entire week at home? Must make mental note. I think the library opens at 9:30 tomorrow….

Anyway, tomorrow is looking nice for study too. M&M is getting picked up at 10 for the party, and returned….. “later” (*insert evil happy dance here!*) Hubby is taking Kiki out of the house (or maybe Mummy will be visiting the library until they close at 12:45….) and the assignment will hopefully be done by the time M&M gets home. I know that’s wishful thinking, but I’ve got detailed notes of the first 600 words. And, . . . that’s about it.

I have great faith in my ability to pull cr*p out of my behind when I need to when it comes to assignments, but I keep ending up on either one of two extremes. Too simple, or too complex for the assignment (1st year law remember). It’s difficult to explain without going into too many details, but if anyone has experience that may be able to help, my email is in the left sidebar, right up the top. See it? Thanks.

I may have it. You never know. At this point, I just hope I pass. And thank goodness for leftover Pizza. Yeah, the menu plan is a bit slack this week.

I shouldn’t be let out of the house when sales are on. Target’s Home Sale started today, featuring my favourite home item - 1000 count cotton sheets for $99.95, reduced from $249.95. Bargain. And trust me, once you’ve tried them, you’ll never go lower than 1000 again! A couple of bathmats, cushions and a new dinner set later (oh, yeah, we kind of wanted a new one - hehe) and I’d spent $200.

Then on to Harvey Norman. I scored an absolute bargain. $769 for an upright Dyson with a 6 year warranty. Now I have no excuse for not vacuuming. Oops!

So all up nearly $1000 spent before 11am. Oops! (get the title reference now?) And there was so much more I wanted at the Target sale. Hubby and I are going back later tonight. Glasses and kids sheets are also on the list.

In my defence, these have been on our list for some time now. Our dinner set is nice, but very multicoloured, we wanted something white and basic and were keeping an eye out. We only have one set of nice sheets, so we needed another for when the kids, well, throw up in them. Our glasses are all mismatched again (when we moved here 5 years ago we had a matching set of 18, of that 18 we have 2 left!). The kids only have two sheet sets each - again not great when there’s sickness invovled. A vacuum cleaner has been needed since mid-July. That’s 2 months I’ve been without one. Thank goodness for tiles!

So I CAN justify it all. Honest.

And now I’m not going shopping (apart from tonight) for at least a week! Cause it’s pay day next week *grin*

I’ll admit I’ve been really slack when it comes to uni work this semester. Well, I thought I had. I had read about half the readings, done a lot of the preparation for the on campus sessions, but still felt unprepared. Once in the room however, I realised that I was still far more prepared than about half the students, and still one of the more vocal members of the group.

I did realise, however, that I am now really behind in the assignment that is due on Tuesday. I took great notes whenever it was mentioned on the weekend, I’ve dug out all the instructions, and to be honest, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by it all.

I’ve broken it down into parts, but it’s still the getting started that’s stopping me. Well, that and the list of 30 or so readings to do before I start. And I kind of have to do those readings before I decide on the angle of my essay.

Well, this isn’t getting it done is it? Does anyone have any tips for getting started?

Oops, a day late. You get that. Nothing exciting this week. Mostly what’s in the cupboard and freezer and we’ll see what else we can come up with. Chicken will feature heavily for the next few weeks after I got 6.5kg of chicken thigh’s for $38 last week. Should do us for lots of meals!!!!

Tuesday - Meat Pie & Veg
Wednesday - Apricot Chicken
Thursday - Tomato Macaroni Cheese
Friday - Fish & Chips
Saturday - Chicken Fried Rice
Sunday - Toasted sandwiches

See, I told you it wasn’t exciting. But my shopping list is short too. Mostly cause Hubby was home all weekend with the kids so was at the shops every day. Ah well, we’ll have snacks in the house for a few days!

That’s right. Flying is stressful. Not the actual flying part, although watching a news story about a plane crash while flying doesn’t build confidence.

No, the stressful part is the fact that a) there is only one flight a day to my local airport, and b) I did not have ONE FLIGHT leave on time the whole weekend. When you’re catching 4 planes in 4 days, and have certain connections to meet, flights leaving on time is important. I’ve caught planes before, lots of times. It’s the short connections that stress me. Anything under 2 hours is not long enough in my book.

My first flight was only a few minutes late. Congestion at Brisbane we were told. Oops! That’s ok, I had a 50 minute change over in Brisbane, plenty of time to be 5 or even 10 minutes late. Which we were.

Second flight to Sydney, well. Apparently it was windy in Sydney on Friday, so one runway was closed. This meant certain flights were cancelled. Thankfully not mine. Although this did mean a certain amount of juggling was required to get everyone from the cancelled flights onto other flights, including mine, meaning we left late. And had to wait to land. Half an hour late.

Coming home the flight was scheduled to leave at 8:30am. To be checked in by 8am, I needed to leave the university at 6:13am on a bus to the train station. I thought I would have plenty of time, but I got on the bus, walked straight onto the train, changed trains and never had more than a minute of waiting on a platform before arriving at the airport and checking in by 7:55am! Phew, that was close.

Apparently not. Still windy, so one runway again, meaning incoming flight was 30 minutes late. Not to worry, we should only leave 5 minutes late.

Or not. Due to leave at 8:30am, we boarded the plane at 9am, which was when we found out what the problem was - lack of runways, so a delay. Oh and by the way it’s really windy in Brisbane too, so landings are delayed, so we need to take on extra fuel (operational requirement of Brisbane airport - fair call I say. I’ve seen Die Hard 2). And as we’re waiting, waiting, waiting, I’m starting to panic. I only had 40 minutes in Brisbane to change flights. Thankfully I had no luggage checked to worry about, but still, I didn’t have a watch so no real idea of the time. I eventually was stressing so much, cause Hubby had told me about Kiki being sick, but I didn’t know how sick, I asked what the plan would be. By this stage it was nearly 9:30, and even with a 60 minute flight, making a 10:35 flight would be tough. Thankfully there was nearly 30 people on the plane for the connecting flight. Holding the other flight until we made it would be cheaper than accomodating us on other flights and overnight (one flight a day remember). She did say that often if there’s only one or two people they don’t hold the plane.

Strangely thankful for school holidays, I relaxed a little, and we finally took off at 9:45. Not only had Virgin held the plane for us, but they’d moved the plane once all the other passengers were on board to the gate next to our arrival from Sydney, to get everyone (and luggage) on board quicker. Taking off 15 minutes late from Brisbane we were just 15 minutes late getting home.

But boy do I NOT want to go through that again. I’m also thankful next time I do that trip I’ll just be going from Brisbane to Sydney. There’s like 500 flights a day between Brisbane and Sydney. And I’m sure that’s not much of an exaggeration.

So am I the only one, or does this sort of thing stress out other people too?

Me! Well, I’ve been home for a couple of hours now, but resisted the urge to check out the high speed internet that Hubby organised while I was away until I managed a cup of tea, and putting a sick Kiki to sleep. Poor mite!

I couldn’t believe I didn’t have time over the weekend to find any internet. I had hoped to have time at the airport this morning between flights, but because it was “windy” in Sydney we were over an hour late, and I barely made the plane home. That would have been fun.

Anyway, I’ll post more about my weekend later. I just felt lost without my daily therapy of email, blogs and internet groups. Now tell me you’ve all been busy while I was away!

I’m off to Sydney today, and inspired by Monica’s post “Tips for Packing Light” at the Clutter Control Freaks blog, I’m packing light. I was also inspired to make up a permanently packed bag of travel toiletries (interestingly enough I was able to do it mostly from things already in the house)

Yeah, that’s a difference. Now if you imagine the size of the bag on the left as the carry on suitcase size, the bag on the right looks even smaller hey? Yeah, I thought so too.

It’ll be a bare necessities weekend, but that’s ok because I may end up sharing a room. It also helps that I only have precisely 7 maternity shirts and 4 maternity bottoms, so I could probably barely fill the small bag with all the clothes that fit me even if I tried. Back to the point: I really think this bag is the prefect size for these weekend trips of mine, and will help me not to pack piles of crap that I really don’t need. I hope.

So yeah, I’m off for the weekend. I won’t have my laptop with me (*pout*) but I reckon I can log in and post you all a little something while I’m away. If I don’t, it just means I’m actually doing what I was there for and working really hard, and I’ll see you all on Monday!

I’m well aware that roughly half my readers “know” me from other places; groups, forums and in real life, while the other half read just know what I’ve written. So, I’ve decided to share with you a little bit more about me. Nothing extravagent mind, just bits and pieces so you have a better idea about me. First, the basics:

I’m 27, my birthday is the 23rd July 1980.
I was born in Darwn, in the Northern Territory. Yes it was hot, red and dusty.
I went to boarding school in Brisbane.
I went to university on the Sunshine Coast and studied Business Management.
I married Hubby (who will now be known as Red Beard since he decided to start his own blog) in December 2001.
I have two girls, with another on the way. M&M is 4 in October and Kiki is 3 in December.
We have a dog, a white ball of fluff, known as Dusty.
I am studying Law externally throuh a university in Sydney. I’m in my 2nd semester at the moment, of a 6 year degree. Yeah, so it’s a long term plan.

That’s all I can think of today. If you have any questions you want me to answer leave a comment or email me, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

You may have noticed I’m making a few changes. I have quite a few plans in progress, so things will be changing for about a week I hope. I’ll keep the public service announcement in the sidebar until I’m done! I’ve also changed the settings so anyone can comment without a blogger account. If you feel the urge, please leave a comment, or email me.

Thank you all for your patience. If you have any comments or suggestions, please leave a comment here or send me an email. I’m pretty much open to anything at this point.

This Friday marks my semi-annual foray south to convince my lecturers I’m doing enough work to complete the assignments. This is rather an expensive proposition, between flights, getting to the campus, accommodation etc etc. All up I think this trip will cost me at least $500 in airfares, travel and accommodation. Now accommodation does include all my meals, but you can guarantee other expenses will come up. Like the fact I have to leave at 6am to catch the plane home – no self respecting university would serve breakfast before 6am on the mid-semester break!

The reason I add all the associated expenses up like that is because at times like this, when I should be studying furiously, I’m instead pondering my blog, and whether or not I like the new layout. $500 (on top of fees and text books etc) is a lot of money and I hope it would motivate me into trying to catch up. It doesn’t seem to be working…

So in response to the title of this post, the state of the study is dismal. I have a ton of work to do and just no motivation. Basically 5 sessions left to prepare for (of a possible and just not enough time, which means I don’t want to start, cause I’ll never finish - right?

I wonder what Hubby’s doing for lunch?