Grow where you are planted

It can be so hard to look on the bright side of life when there are so many other places you would like to be. And "if life hands you lemons, make lemonade" doesn't really describe it. It's not about making the best of a bad situation. It's not about being happy with wanting something, getting something just as functional but not ideal, and making something! even! better! out of it.

It's all very Biblical of me to draw on this proverb as it is from Corinthians. And there is lots of interpretation of it on the webs about the Biblical approach to this but that's not where I'm coming from, although it does show that (a) I heard this somewhere, (b) some aspects of Christianity are universal and (c) it is universal.

But when it comes down to it, the take-home message is that adverse life-situations need not prevent you from having a successful and fulfilling life.

There are lots of things in my life right now that I don't like because they are situations that are not what I want, and not where I'm happy. Physically I am troubled by my lack of (not being able to do the couch-to-5k program that got me started in running 7 years ago, and that people who are less motivated, less fit, less driven, less experienced, less pigheaded, have taken up and wah! I want to be able to do that even though I hated running and am not athletic) fitness, I am flailing because I am not finished my (degree of doom with vague scents of a groundhog day) studies, I'm sick of being a student and not having income when I'm putting effort into my life, and so on. I'm tired of working at Bunnings - I'm something (ashamed? embarassed? amazed?) about the fact that my longest employment has been at mininum wage in a position that I've gone nowhere in, because it was never a 5 year plan to be there.

But this in part clouds the rest of my life, where I am happy. I have a good marriage, a healthy fabulous child, earning capacity, a future to work towards and look forward to, a roof over my head, access to so many things that are first-world, and so much potential.

So it's not that I have lemons, and need to make the best of it. It's deeper than that. It's about being in a situation, planted somewhere specific, and having to not just get by. Not just dwell on the momentary need to make lemonade, but to put down roots and bloom.

And that's what I'm doing with this placement. It's not where I want to be with my midwifery - I want to work with women who trust their bodies, who understand what they're doing, who embrace and celebrate the journey, and joyously welcome labour and birth. But I am doing good things on my placement. I have identified what I want to learn from it and I'm learning. I'm stepping up and using the skills I have to support women in their chosen birth. I'm good at what I do and I have had to choose to bloom where I am planted.

Mondayitis hits with a vengeance

Even though it's Tuesday. I want to crawl under a rock and not come out. I miss my friends and am inexplicably hurt that they are feeling the same way as me and don't want to catch up even though they're on holidays. Whinge whinge whinge - Winter can bite my fat hairy legs.

You want to know the definition of torture? That'd be me offering to redo the books that contain some of the products at The House of Bun that don't have a barcode. There's a couple of thousand of them, and we have a folder of them at each register. The ones we have are very out of date and are falling to pieces. So I am checking them. Line by line. And making sure we still carry them. And that the codes are still relevant (ie is it barcoded now? Take it out). And retyping most of them into one document.

Because the previous documents are badly formatted.

In Comic Sans.

Which I can't abide.

Now I'm off to choir rehearsal. I sing in a choir that surely takes an award for being the most confusing and convoluted and intricate evah. It's exhausting but it's either that or I'm going to sit at home alone in my big empty cold house, and be miserable.

On blankets and crocheting

When I was little, my maternal grandmother (I think) crocheted me a blanket. From memory, it was purple and dark blue and pale pink and cream, in hexagons. It was probably a single bed blanket but when I was an early teenager, it came apart and was never fixed. Which is odd, as my mother is a consumate seamstress and could probably have managed to fix it.

Oh wait - there's a link there perhaps? Oh that's just great. I go and blog about something innocent like a blanket and instead I end up dwelling on a freaking blanket and the nonrelationship I have with my mother. Yay.

ANYWAYS, the blanket has been on my mind recently. I want it as I remember it from my childhood. I want to look at how it's made and crochet some more. Well, any. I can crochet a chain (badly) and have only just bought a crochet hook. I can't read a pattern yet. So I'd like to. Do more crocheting. And get the blanket back. But how to get it back from my mother? My options are to go there myself (not going to happen c.f. snowflakes and hell) or ask her for it. But if I ask her for it, she can put conditions on giving it to me, or not give it to me and leave me in the same position but also grieving all over again for our relationship, *as* well as the loss of a blanket. Which in my mind is gorgeous and cuddly and wool and pretty and I'm hoping that it is something even half as nice.

So I sent her a relatively easy message via Bookface / Stalkbook and asked her for it to be posted. She sent me back a pointless message saying way more than she needed to, all about her of course, with essentially a "yes" response. When it turns up, I'll post pics and explain how I fix it.

Yay for parties!

Last night was our housewarming and it was fun. It started at 8pm and as you can see from the last photo here, it was a late night. I went to bed on the way to 3am to be honest and I was FREEZING and needed a LOT of time to warm up.

One thing I did do (while drunk none the less) was to cut Sarah's hair. You can get an idea of the before and after lengths of the hair - in the end it looked a lot like Lucy out of the recent Narnia movies. Apparently, anyway, as I piked shortly after doing the first cut bec



The back of my hair is great and I did that myself. I bought scissors recently and had a ball with them. I like my hair red too.