I have identified one emerging trend from my blog entries for this year; it seems that with each passing month, I have blogged less and less.
No, this is not a post merely to up the number of my blog entries for March. I think it's fair to say that life has been hectic and full-on, both at work, and on the home front.
You've heard a little bit about my work. Things in February once again gone haywire, and a lot of my energy has been thrown into recovering from said events in March. On the home front... hmm... let's see...
1. Fred and I have finally bitten the bullets and announced to the family that yes, we would like to go to Philippines, his home town. My darling husband hasn't been back in excess of 15 years, and would really love to see it again (understandably).
To my husband, it was very important for his Mum to come with us, as she knows the lingo (most important), and knows where to go to find the relatives we would like to see. From there, the idea of a family holiday (not only us, family of 2, but also the larger part of my husband's family) emerged. So the most part of February and March have been spent having long discussions and gatherings with Fred's older brother, his wife, and their small children (our niece and nephew), planning this family holiday for this Christmas and New Year 2012.
2. In the earlier post, I've mentioned that we will have been living in our current house for 10 years this September. Of that 10 years, 5 years of it have seen us transforming our messy, bushy backyard into a beautiful, big patio. It was, up until March, a wide open patio, and with our little doggie (who turned 15 in January) being completely deaf and did very little except curl herself up in her dog house sleeping, the birds roamed free, stealing bits of her water and literally shitting everywhere around our patio. For this reason alone, we have stopped inviting guests over to our house because it would take us a whole day just to clean the patio, and then the next day spent cooking and preparing the patio for visitors.
So Fred and I had had enough! It was time to enjoy our lovely patio the way it was supposed to be enjoyed. To facilitate this, Fred and I bought some tinted PVC blinds, and spent... 2-3 weekends putting that up, with me holding up one end and Fred doing the same to the other, drilling holes onto the horizontal beams and screwing these PVC blinds in place.
It has been a wonderful pay-off, I tell you. We've been busy entertaining ever since, and I can't tell you how rapt I am to only have to wipe down a film of dust off the table. I can't tell you how invigorating it is to be able to walk out to the patio at night time, sipping hot chocolate with throw-on rug wrapped around me, chatting away about my day with my darling husband.
It does come with sacrifices though, such as putting meaningful entries to this blog of mine. Or having some precious quality time in which I can be left on my lonesome to write to my heart's content.
I do have this prevailing sense of hope that one day soon, everything will settle down. Work will NOT demand too much of my time, I will have a free weekend, free of obligation, even as a wife, to pour all my heart and soul into writing.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Another Day, Another Funeral...
Seems as though lately, this is what I've been doing.
Today, a group of us trekked up to Toowoomba to show our support to one of the Area Supervisors I look after as he said goodbye to his younger brother, taken away from this world at the age of 54, after 10-month courageous battle of leukaemia.
You know, I thought, not having a personal stake on the deceased, having that distance from the man my dear boss had to bury, would also have toughened my heart, just a little. But I found a single tear rolled down my cheek, touched by the moving tribute the deceased's wife had made to her husband of ten years. I found a small part of me questioning God, once more, if it had been a fair decision to take him from the people who had clearly loved him dearly far too soon. And perhaps, there was a small niggling fear gnawing on the inside, as I looked around and noted the white hairs on some of my other bosses today, and finding out their ages, that I would have to say goodbye to the people I've worked closely with, and loved in a certain way, in my life time. And that reality, brought even more real to me by the conversation I had with my boss' wife, hit it home; that they are approaching the age in which some of their friends are nearing the end of their lives, and this saying goodbye might have to become a regular occurrence one must accustom yourselves with.
But today, I want to write about the positives; the sense of camaraderie our organisation has formed. I was chatting to my husband about having to go to this funeral last night, and I made a comment that never before, in my professional life, I have ever encountered this sense of compassion, as I have by being part of this particular organisation. Yes, we go about our days, completing our tasks; yes, we stop and 'play' from time to time, and for a little while, our colleagues become more than just a bunch of people I work with; yes, we go about our lives, we have our own family and circle of friends we socialise with, separate from our professional lives.
But days like these, going to a funeral of a man who is, literally, a stranger to me, whose association only extends so far as my working for his older brother, and finding a band of us going to the funeral simply to support the man we currently work with, I see the strong bond of the community we have formed; thicker and stronger than blood sometimes are. It is the support you can count on, and one that will remain there, available to be called upon whenever one is in need.
Today, a group of us trekked up to Toowoomba to show our support to one of the Area Supervisors I look after as he said goodbye to his younger brother, taken away from this world at the age of 54, after 10-month courageous battle of leukaemia.
You know, I thought, not having a personal stake on the deceased, having that distance from the man my dear boss had to bury, would also have toughened my heart, just a little. But I found a single tear rolled down my cheek, touched by the moving tribute the deceased's wife had made to her husband of ten years. I found a small part of me questioning God, once more, if it had been a fair decision to take him from the people who had clearly loved him dearly far too soon. And perhaps, there was a small niggling fear gnawing on the inside, as I looked around and noted the white hairs on some of my other bosses today, and finding out their ages, that I would have to say goodbye to the people I've worked closely with, and loved in a certain way, in my life time. And that reality, brought even more real to me by the conversation I had with my boss' wife, hit it home; that they are approaching the age in which some of their friends are nearing the end of their lives, and this saying goodbye might have to become a regular occurrence one must accustom yourselves with.
But today, I want to write about the positives; the sense of camaraderie our organisation has formed. I was chatting to my husband about having to go to this funeral last night, and I made a comment that never before, in my professional life, I have ever encountered this sense of compassion, as I have by being part of this particular organisation. Yes, we go about our days, completing our tasks; yes, we stop and 'play' from time to time, and for a little while, our colleagues become more than just a bunch of people I work with; yes, we go about our lives, we have our own family and circle of friends we socialise with, separate from our professional lives.
But days like these, going to a funeral of a man who is, literally, a stranger to me, whose association only extends so far as my working for his older brother, and finding a band of us going to the funeral simply to support the man we currently work with, I see the strong bond of the community we have formed; thicker and stronger than blood sometimes are. It is the support you can count on, and one that will remain there, available to be called upon whenever one is in need.
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