Turn, turn, turn

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

1848 Shaker song. Listen - it is beautiful!



I started Lent with a bucketful of high hopes - all the positive changes I was going to make, all the good things I was going to do... but being human, they have dribbled away and dribbled away until I am left carefully balancing that last teaspoonful and praying that I won't spill it too.

First the dripping trail:

- clean like the Lord is coming to visit: one and a half weeks out of 4. I've kept climbing Mt Washmore (the laundry) though, and the dishes twice a day... let's say 35%.

- exercise every day: it seems worse, but it's really only this week that I've slacked off... started with TOM & high humidity, but coincided with anniversary & birthday celebrations to add to the cumulative blah effect... I'll be generous... 75%

- take advantage of study time... again I was doing reasonably well and then somewhere around the middle of last week I allowed the distractions to creep in and take control of my time again. Comparing what I need to do with what I have actually done... 65%

That gives me a grand score of 58%. PHEW! I just scraped in with a pass... but you know me - scraping in is never satisfactory. I'm an over achiever. I want high distinctions to be happy. I NEED to zoom home with flying colours. Well, the special celebrations (excuses for being naughty) are out of the way and Lent is not over yet. There are still 11 days until Easter - and 11 is my lucky number. Hmmmmmm.

Okay, here's the plan. Start by celebrating 11 successes, then set 11 goals to speed me through the next 11 days. Let's refill the bucket!!!

CELEBRATE SUCCESS:

1. I bought a pair of shorts on special for my gym wear - $11.
2. They only had size 14 & smaller left on the rack. I took a pair of size 14 home without trying them on first - and they fit fine!!! (not that many months ago size 20 was a squeeze!)
3. I found a pair of generic orthotic insoles at Woolworths for $21 and they seem to help the pain when I walk, giving me hope I am on the right track.
4. The jade and pearl jewellery that Yeti bought me for our anniversary arrived and is very beautiful. I shall feel like a queen when I wear it.
5. I found FREEMIND - the mindmap program that I have been raving about. It is revolutionising my note taking and is so much fun to use that it makes me WANT to work.
6. There are clean sheets on the beds.
7. I have only missed saying the rosary on 3 days. If I skipped my exercise, I still did the rosary while I hung the washing or did other tasks.
8. So far so good on the don't weigh yourself commitment. Yup, I gave up my scale for lent lol... I couldn't think of any material thing I was inordinately attached to... then I thought of how often I weigh and measure myself and what a sacrifice it would be NOT TO KNOW!!! So I gave it up. And I don't know... and I'm not going to weigh myself until Easter Sunday - hence the desperate desire to turn this train around and ensure a pleasant surprise when I do :P
9. One of our cats, Sweety Follow (named by Wombat, can't you guess?) was bitten by a red belly black snake. I found him lying paralysed out in the yard. We brought him in and cared for him and thanks be after five days he has fully recovered and is back to being a happy 'uncle' cat playing with his 4 kitten siblings. We have seen two more snakes since - but thankfully the boys seem to make enough noise to keep them away.
10. I have started reading the Magic Pudding to Wombat and he is loving it ( a bit above his comprehension level, but he gets the jokes and the songs are fun to sing).
11. We (I) finished the labryinth! There's a little clearing down in the bush. Last year, Wombat and I collected loose stones and built a double spiral. This month I got more ambitious. We now have a full labyrinth next to our double spiral. Wooohoooooo! The boys seemed to find playing down in the bush every day to be more positive than playing around the house, too. I also counted an hour of rock carrying on my exercise ticker several times lol.

And now the TO DO list:

1. Take your iron tonic twice a day.
2. Find your water bottle counter - or make a new one if necessary - and DRINK your water.
3. Exercise for at least 30 minutes EVERY day - the free gym trial is coming up... this should be easy!
4. 10 minutes of parenting reading each day.
5. Keep saying the rosary.
6. Clean your desk - give your workspace a fresh SPARKle.
7. Declutter - find 11 items to throw away and 11 items to give away.
8. At least 2 days of processed food detox - starting today.
9. At least 30 minutes each day of solid study.
10. At least one small item off your cleaning list each day.
11. Eat clean until Easter - no more treats! That includes letting Wombat and the others finish the birthday cake lol. One slice is enough for you. (Don't complain - you shouldn't have gulped down spoonfuls of frosting just because you made too much. The boys were sensible enough not to take your offer - what made you think you needed to overload your system with margarine, icing sugar and cocoa??? It also includes jellybeans and block chocolate. NO MORE UNTIL EASTER - you hear me???) [Sorry for shouting... just need to make sure the lecture sank in... see what kind of a nagging mother I am? but my inner child is getting too spoilt lately... 11 days of no indulging - and all tantrums will be ignored.]

There... that should do it! I was going to post a pic of the labyrinth but my graphics program froze... I'll do a photo entry some time next week instead :D

I'm off to listen to my favourite turn-me-around song again :) Hope you liked it!

PS. just reading through this and noticed the interesting psychological point that i celebrate "MY" success but then I tell myself what "YOU" will do. I'm not going to rewrite it, but next time, I must remember to commit myself and say "I WILL" instead of hiding behind the fiction of an external authority telling me what to do (ie thus avoiding personal responsibility for my choices).

It was

THAT kind of a day :(

Here's just a 5 second snippet. I won't subject you to more...



Added incentive to perservere with my new books: 'How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk' and 'Siblings without rivalry' both by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish.

Everywhere I went on the net where child (and parent) behaviour was discussed, these books kept popping up as the number one recommendation. I figured, if the Catholic homeschoolers, the Montessori mamas and the Charlotte Mason devotees ALL loved these books, they HAD to be good. I was right! They are just common sense, but sometimes it helps to have things written out as a plan. They work for all relationships too :) I'm even putting them into practice with Yeti lol...

I wasn't taught much about communicating when I was little. I can't handle anger - my own or other peoples - effectively at all. If someone criticizes me (for anything, no matter how small and trivial) I burst into tears. What is worse, I am teaching those bad habits to Wombat. What you can hear above is him screaming "Hug me, mummy... please hug me... just hug me" with the desperate broken-heartedness of a 3 year old who has just gotten into trouble and consequently his world is ending. But this is happening constantly - everytime he doesn't get his way... everytime I am busy with Munchkin (who is also screaming in the video. He's a very sweet-natured baby, but BOY does he get furious when he has a problem. Not just a little bit angry but absolutely off his little rocker. Gets over it quickly though - much like his daddy in temperment... Wombat is more like me and can make himself sick with crying and stress.) That's the thing... I find myself using all the negative comments that made me what I am and which I vowed never to use - "stop crying, you'll make yourself sick" - I realise now my mother was perfectly genuine (and in some ways justified) in her response and I find myself feeling that same coldness and lack of empathy - but I KNOW it doesn't work, so I went looking for an alternative method that suited me. (ps. I am not picking on my mum - the older Wombat gets, the more I sympathize with her - and pity my younger self lol - I just don't want to use the same methods and repeat the cycle for another generation.)

Just don't fall into the trap of congratulating yourself on how well you are doing with communication now and how there are fewer tantrums in the house and the problem is solved... otherwise you will end up with a day like today! A number of the reviewers on Amazon said they read from this book every day! That sounds like a good idea. Reminder to self: it's a work in progress and will continue for the rest of your life :D THERE IS A LONG WAY TO GO!!!

You will probably be hearing about these books (and others) again - there are exercises for the parent to do... I'll post mine here for my own record and the amusement of others...

Spending Shock

I know I've been spending too much money this Christmas. I've really been carried away by wanting to make it lots of fun for Wombat, and to get nice things for family and friends for once. We've had a couple of unexpected bonuses and I felt like we were in a pretty comfortable position for a change, instead of scraping to make Christmas presents from materials I already had, which is my usual habit.

As usual, pride comes before a fall.

We've been doing most of our shopping on Ebay, using Paypal - not wanting to take Munchkin out into crowded shopping centres. I knew I was getting close to the amount that was actually in my bank account, but said to myself it didn't matter as Paypal had my credit card details to use as an alternative funding source, so everything would be fine. I had been saving up and had plenty of available credit. What I didn't know was that my bank would charge me a $45 dishonour fee for every direct debit transaction that bounced back to the credit card!

There were six transactions that bounced - some were for less than $10. Now each of those gifts has an extra $45 charge attached to it, totalling $270 in bank fees! That means I've paid $400 for $130 worth of Christmas presents. OUCH!!!

I feel pretty stupid, especially since Yeti and I have just been having some slightly heated discussions about my immature spending tendencies. Much as I loathe keeping anything from him, I think cowardice will win and decide discretion is the better part of valour.

Oooook. I just thought I'd see how it averaged out, so I divided $400 by 6. The answer? 66.6 and a whole lot more sixes. The number of the beast? Think it's high time I got back to concentrating on the real meaning of Christmas and let commercialism go its merry way without me.

I've still got some empty spots on my gift list... where's my sewing basket?

PS. just found this in a book my sister gave me last Christmas. Seems like an appropriate way to close this embarrassing entry on a more positive note.

What to do this Christmas

by Pam Baker

Mend a quarrel.

Seek out a forgotten friend.

Share some treasure.

Give a soft answer.

Encourage youth.

Keep a promise.

Find the time.

Listen.

Apologise if you were wrong.

Be gentle.

Laugh a little.

Laugh a little more.

Express your gratitude.

Welcome a stranger.

Gladden the heart of a child.

Take pleasure in the beauty and

wonder of the earth.

Speak your love.

Speak it again.

(found in Christmas Nativities and Stories by Elisabeth Van Mullekom-Cserep,

Nativity House Publishing, Australia, 1999, p.13.)

Reality interruptus

It's worse than I thought - my father's visit this weekend seemed to be the breaking point (especially my going to bed with Wombat & leaving Dad to argue with Yeti until after midnight) - and the stress of having to spend over $2000 and 2 weeks in town for the College of Law...

Yeti is furious with how much of my time the 'law study' is taking when I told him it would only be 3 hours a day.

He is furious that I am not working on the book I promised to write from my thesis.

He is furious that his 85 year old mother is worn out from doing all the housework.

He is furious that they both spend all their time supporting me and I give them nothing but bad attitude in return.

He is furious that he never sees me, and that if I keep going in this law career we probably will never have any more kids because I will always be too busy and too stressed to even think of getting pregnant.

We had a huge argument tonight and he basically gave me an ultimatum - prove why I should be doing the law and that I really want to do it & fight for my right to, instead of constantly complaining like I'm being forced to do it.

Immediately investigate things I can do straight away with my degrees - I am going to write to nearby universities after I post this and ask about lecturing/tutoring, just to find out if I DO have the possibility of an academic career.

Quit studying before I spend all Wombat's money on myself (my only income is the government parenting payment) and become a housewife, giving my full attention to mothering & being supportive of others - but if I take that (very attractive) option I have to be the best housewife the world has ever seen - and I have NO practice at that. It would also require me to justify why I have spent 13 years and run up a $36,000 study debt gaining two high-level honours degrees, with no intention of ever using them... giving up my law studies this year would waste $6000 in fees (I didn't pay them upfront - they are added to that immense aforementioned study debt - but if I ever go back and start this course again I would have to pay them upfront.)

If he knew the reality of my procrastination, I think he would demand I leave as I am obviously uninterested in being married to him - he would see it as that much of a betrayal of 'us'.

Whatever way I look at it, big changes are going to have to occur. I need to do some serious work and thinking. I have a lot of investigation to do before we can make informed decisions. I can no longer keep drifting along in my comfortable life, pretending to be so focussed on the grindstone that I can't see how miserable I am making those around me. As tempting as it is to throw in the towel and 'make the stress go away' I can't keep making spur of the moment decisions and then forcing everyone else to live by them - that's how I got into law in the first place - it was not from any idealism or desire to be a lawyer - it was just a quick answer that seemed to satisfy other peoples' idea of what I should do with my life.

Please pray for us - I will try to keep you informed of how things go. There's a brand new ending out there for us... I just have to find the right path to start on - but first I need to find my 'Big Gold Star destination'... and that's going to require some divine assistance.