back to work

Six weeks of holidays was starting to feel like too much. I was being so lazy: waking up late, watching tv for hours and hours, not doing anything around the house. I enjoyed spending time with friends and family whenever I wanted and I enjoyed visiting my sister in Yallingup. But I have missed the sense of accomplishment I get from spending a day at work.

I never thought I would feel that way, but it makes sense with the type of person I am. I’m a procrastinator. Actually, that’s probably why I work in a job where I have to be in certain places at certain times. The timetable forces me to work.

Tomorrow is the first school day of 2010. I have to admit that I really do love the first week back. I love seeing all the tiny, new year 8s and it’s amazing to see how much the other kids have grown during the holidays. I like the freshness of the first week. My brain and arms grow weary because each class consists of the teacher explaining the course for the year, but it’s a good way to get back into it after six sign-free weeks.

Sooooo……today. The weather is beautiful: sunny, with a cool breeze. I want to go and get a new travel mug from The Good Store and I’m going to bake cupcakes to take to work tomorrow for morning tea.

It’s funny how it seems that I’ve spent years rejecting the idea of being good friends with the people I work with. I’ve really kept them separate from my ‘real’ friends. “They’re just my colleagues”. But in the past six months or so, I’ve started to embrace the idea of them being some of the closest friends I have. We don’t spend weekends together. I see them once every holiday break. We spend seven hours a day, five days a week, forty weeks a year together. That’s a fair amount of time. We discuss a lot of different things. They’re the only people that truly understand my job – which seems to mean a lot. I’m not sure why. I think that for us to have our job in common is more important than it is in other lines of work. Perhaps. It seems to be a stronger bond.

I also have to take my nail polish off today.

Mornings.

I love mornings SO much. Morning is definitely my favourite time of day. All my friends are night owls and they call me a nanna when I go to bed hours before they do.

I don't mind. I love waking early, when the day is fresh and cool. Everything is quiet.

This morning I drove to the Subi farmers' market. I fell in love with it last Saturday and decided that I'd have to make the drive again this week. I filled my bag with fruit, veg, a vegetarian quiche for dinner and almond croissants for breakfast. Then I bought a coffee for the drive home.

I wanted to stay and sit under the tree to drink my coffee and eat my croissant, but I was by myself and I would have preferred the company of a friend.

These feelings prompted a long daydream of living in Subiaco with all my friends and family living nearby, and we'd meet each week at the markets to sit under the tree and drink coffee, eat breakfast calzones or croissants and discuss the week that had just been.

I was thinking about that for the whole drive home, whilst I was sipping my (really well made) coffee and singing along with Panic At The Disco.

Now I'm sitting in the backyard, enjoying the morning sounds, sneaking peeks at my cat snoozing in the garden bed and writing this blog.

Mornings are the best.

Sunday Sunday

Things I'm happy about today:

Sleeping well last night.

Planting a roma tomato bush upside down.

Court coming home from Esperance.

Going to the outdoor cinema tonight to see (500) Days of Summer with a friend I haven't seen in months.

Eating delicious leftovers.

My garden looking greener.

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I've been a fair bit unmotivated in the exercise department recently. It's really hard to get outside and be active when the temperature is up around 38/39/40 every day. I chose a couple of cooler days last week to get into the garden. I was super glad to be cleaning it up and making it look nice.

I think I'm looking forward to holidays being over and me being back at work so I can exercise in the early morn when it's cool, or in the evening when I've finished work.

Facebook bra colour debacle.

The Facebook status bra colour schtick was a new low in faux advocacy.

That was tweeted by someone I follow. I agree. I voiced my opinion to the person who forwarded the bra colour thing to me on Facebook and they weren't happy about it.

In fact, I called the whole thing 'retarded'. That was a very lazy word choice I made. I should have thought for another few seconds and come up with something a bit more mature.

Aside from the poor word choice, I'm feeling bad for expressing my opinion. Is it because I was a little bit smug in mentioning my own fund-raiser when responding to the person who was flabbergasted by me calling their 'efforts' retarded? Yes. I'd say so. It's also my use of inverted commas when I talk about their efforts for breast cancer.

I'm supposed to be all about the love this year. I've been spouting love talk to everyone. But I can't even button my lip and ignore a bra colour call on Facebook. Instead, I chose to go nuts about how stupid I thought it was. That's not showing love to the person who sent it.

I feel like such a dick.

I even signed my name for the Charter for Compassion. I don't seem to be showing compassion very well though.

To sum up my thoughts right now: I should have chosen better words to express my point of view and I should have done so in a calmer manner.

Inspiration

I'm feeling motivated and inspired this morning, so I thought I'd blog about it. I may need to read it and remind myself in a few days.

This year is all about the love. Showing appreciation, gratitude and love for everything I have and for my family and friends. Love for the environment (at large and in my own home) and for the communities I am a part of. Love for my own mind and body.

If anyone reads this I'm pretty sure you'll be close to vomiting in your mouth a little.....if you do, you'll need to swallow it back down and embrace my loving words! You'll feel better for it!

See how I go...

I've been thinking about resolutions. Usually I don't bother, because I'm not committed to making whatever change I think I need. This year is different. I'm not content to just exist. I want to make conscious choices. My sister and I watched 'It's A Wonderful Life' last night, which could be why I'm thinking about this.

I'll be 28 next year. That's a pretty grown-up age. I feel like I should be more responsible, start doing things to help others. Stop being selfish.

The last few months I've lost a bit of weight. This has made me proud that I achieved something and hopeful that I can do the same in other aspects of my life. I have a little more weight to lose, so that is one of my resolutions for twentyten.

Another one is to get fit. I would love to run the half marathon in the City to Surf in August. That's 21kms. Currently I can run about 4kms. I have a fair bit of work to do with this one and I've been thinking I should just be aiming to run the 12km fun run, but I want to aim higher. I refuse to be disappointed with any improvement over 4kms. 21kms would just be the icing on the cake....the running cake...

As I've already mentioned, we're going to NY for Christmas. I want to save as much money as I can for this. I've been saving since the end of June 09, trying not to spend money on anything unnecessary and making sure I put some money away each week. It's really hard to save and still pay bills! I want to be a super saver. I'll find joy in things that don't cost money, like good health, gardening and spending time with loved ones.

Those are a few of my resolutions. I have some other more personal ones, but I think it can all be summed up as being a better person to myself and to everyone around me.

The best way to spread Christmas cheer, is singing loud for all to hear.

I love Christmas. I like the presents side of things, but mostly I like being with family and friends, consuming beautifully prepared food and drink.

This year I've found it difficult to get my Christmas cheer happening. I flew back to Perth a week ago and I've mostly been busy getting used to being back home.

Aside from that, I'm dead keen to cover our house in paper chains and other homemade decorations. My sister suggested a Bare Christmas next year. Homemade everything. Gifts, decorations, food. I love the idea, but it will have to wait for the year after because.....

next year we're spending Christmas in Nu Yawk. Look - I punked up the name, made it a little more edgy, more rock n roll.

I'm really looking forward to it, even though it's a year away and we have some fairly stern saving to do. There are so many things I want to do there and a lot of them involve food. I can see myself getting pudgy. But then again, maybe not. Court has picked up a book that is filled with different walks you can do around NY. Will it be too cold to walk around outside? It'll be a type of cold we N-E-V-E-R get in Perth.

Anyway, I've been dreaming about NY and all the things we can do, how long we can afford to stay there, if we could hire a car and drive up to Boston for a few days... I feel a little bit like the country kid visiting the Big Smoke for the first time. I suppose it's like that, because Perth isn't exactly known for its skyscrapers and nightlife. Perth is a good place to get a good night's sleep.

I will ooze Australian tourist fo' sho.

Do you know what else I love about Christmas? Christmas films. My favourite is Elf.