Domestic Bliss

After thinking about it, talking about it and googling it for years I have finally got a cleaner.
Working full time and traveling twice a month plus studying law and keeping my house tidy and clean is unsustainable. I am great at the tidy part but not brilliant at cleaning. In my defense I am allergic to both dust and bathroom mold. But if I am honest I just hate cleaning. I am good if I am in the mood but I am not in the mood very often.

So my wonderful husband organised a cleaner to come once a fortnight for the very reasonable price of $49. I think that is pretty good value. I do feel bad for spending the money on it though, when it could be going towards our huge mortgage or something more worthwhile like food. You will be pleased to know that despite this guilt I am pushing through and having the cleaner anyway because I don't think having my house paid off sooner will really be very meaningful if I go insane with stress anyway.

There is another component to having a domestic helper. I feel that as a woman and as I wife I am not fulfilling my role properly. And despite the whole gender equality thing we pretend to have going on I still feel like the home is my responsibility and I am failing by not being able to care for it myself. I feel guilty that I have to pay someone else to help me. But again you will be pleased to know that I am working through this guilt and having the cleaner come anyway. But I do feel bad.

And Yes if you must know I did clean a little before the cleaner came. I know I know. There is no need to say it!

Dominoes

Reading my last post makes me laugh.

The new job I started didn't last for very long. We underwent a restructure at work which meant the person whose job I was doing came back much sooner than expected. And that meant that I only had three weeks in the job instead of three months. Very amusing considering how nervous I was about starting it - I need not have worried.

Essentially what happened is that someone higher up the chain from me came back from leave expectantly and so the business had to be reshuffled to give them something to do. This caused a whole host of people to be returned to the jobs they actually own and I was at the very end of that little chain of dominoes.
It was heartening, after being told that I wasn't needed any further, that my boss said "YES!!" like she had won the lotto when I told her I was returning to her team. It is nice to be loved.

New job nerves

Tomorrow I start a new job. One I haven't done before.

It is a good opportunity for me and a move up career-wise.

BUT I was really enjoying the job I was doing and I am a bit sad about leaving it. There are so many things that I have been working on that will remain unfinished or more specifically I have to trust to someone else to finish.

AND I was part of a really great team and was loving working with them all.

Although I know it will be fine in a few weeks BUT right now I am nervous about it. I want it to go well and I hope that I can do a good job and that the new team will be fun to work with and respect me for my skills.

A moment

Tonight as I was walking through the Queen Street mall I saw a fabulous orange coat in the window at Cue....then I remembered that I can't wear orange.....how could I have forgotten that?

Melbourne

I was in Melbourne this week for work. The work part all went well although I ended up with more action items than I would have liked. And the shopping went well too.

Melbourne is one of my favorite shopping destinations, certainly my favorite in Australia. This time I focus mainly on Melbourne Central and Myer.

The Melbourne City Myer is a bit of a rabbit's warren and I became completely disorientated and lost both times I visited. I suppose if you were accustomed to shopping there it would be ok and you could probably navigate it effectively. But I am not accustomed to shopping there and as a result spent the whole time I was shopping there feeling quite lost.

Melbourne Central was great. There was such a good variety of shops. I bought a denim skirt from Espirt which is very cute. I got Tom a nice business shirt from Industrie which, kudos to me, fit perfectly.

Review: National Portrait Gallery

After working a 12 hour day on Tuesday I flew to Canberra early Wednesday morning for a full day of meetings. As luck would have it I was able to finish my work early and by 3:30 pm I had met with everyone I needed to, dropped by all my friends in the Canberra Office and discussed every possible report with every possible person. As my colleague had hired a car for the day we decided to go to the national portrait gallery in Parkes which is a suburb very close to Parliament House in Canberra.

Visiting the portrait gallery was a very enjoyable experience.

The building is very new and quite beautiful. It has sharp model lines and architecture but inside is warm and inviting. I was particularly taken with the bathroom and took several photos of the vanity units which I would like to use when we renovate our house.

The portraits in the gallery ranged in medium, size and shape. There were photos, sculptures, painting that looked like people and paintings that looked like blobs that represented people. I was asked in next day which was my favorite and couldn't think of any. But some of my highlights would be Princess Mary, John and Jeanette Howard, Justice Kirby and some of the Indigenous portraits.















One of the best things about the gallery was the descriptions of the person in each portrait. I think they were designed to make the reader interested in the person and to inspire the reader to follow up and find out more about the person. They achieved this by combining odd facts in short sentences without much flow or explanation.

One of the classics was " she had 5 remarkable children". This was confusing to me and I had no idea if the lady in question had 20 children of whom 5 were remarkable or if she had only 5 children all of whom were remarkable.

Another description explained the way the subject had died - "he shot himself in the back of the house". I must admit I thought the last word in the sentence was going to be head and had to read the sentence again just to make sure. Why is where is the house he shot himself part of a one paragraph summary about him? How is that in any way important?

I wondered what they would write next to my portrait. I suggest the following:

Long Dark Hair Blue Eyes (1979 - ) This oil on canvas painting of the much loved public servant was painted in 2003 after her first year in office. Inspired by Elizabeth of Bavaria, Long Dark Hair was not painted or photographed after her 30th birthday, making this image of her the most recent. She is best know for her ability to remember song lyrics and write odd blog posts.

Big decisions

(No Givinya, this is not about your dream)

We recently decided that we will renovate our house. While we have been considering and planning toward it for years now the decision to go ahead with a specific plan has really only been made recently.

It is exciting to know that we are going ahead with our plans and that the house that looks so good on paper will soon be a reality.

There is lots of little things left to happen before the building starts, including:

• soil testing
• surveying
• finalising plans with engineering stuff
• moving out to enable renovation
• moving in with in-laws
• choosing tiles, windows, doors, etc etc

So far we have

• finalised the architectural drawings
• chosen a builder
  
• removed the massive Jacaranda tree from the front yard that would have been in the way of the drive way

Before the Jacaranda was cut down. It was almost three times the size of our house...


And after it was removed...

suddenly the house seems small.

Anyway, I am sure there will be more renovation related posts in the future. It seems like the sort of stressful expensive project that will create some great blog fodder. :)

The novel

I love to read. I love to enjoy a good story that gets me thinking and introduces me to interesting characters and situations. I have been trying to cut down on the amount I read while I am studying but once I start a book I can't stop reading until it is finished (unless I don't like it of course). My attempt to read less has been wholly unsuccessful.

All the reading I have been doing has got me thinking about writing a novel. I have thought about it a few times before and really like the idea. I don't have a particular story that I want to capture. I would have to think of one before I started because I don't think I could make it up as I go along.

I had an interesting dream last night which would have made the basis for a great novel. When I woke up this morning I thought wow what a great dream - that would be a good book. I then proceeded with my day and have completely forgotten what the dream was about. I tried hard to remember. My ipod is flat so I spent 20 minutes on the bus home tonight trying to remember what had happened - but to no avail.

Perhaps I will sleep with a pen and paper on my bedside table tonight.

Pure torture

Details of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by the US have been in the news this week. It is so awful that this sort of treatment would be accepted and acceptable by such a large influential nation such as America. Although I am sure there are many people in America who are horrified by the news.

I find it unacceptable that one person could treat another person in such a way.

But it seems that this is the way that the world views people who have made big mistakes. Even in Australia peoples rights are taken away if they do something wrong (break the law). For example, prisoners in for longer than three years lose their right to vote in elections during that period.

I think it is sad that society spends so much time and effort punishing law breakers and such little effort in trying to re-rehabilitate people. I mean what good does forcing someone to go to prison do? If it was meant as a disincentive to commit a crime in the first place then clearly that is not working because prison populations continue to increase. Current Australian laws give judges very little discretion when it come to sentencing - many crimes now have mandatory prison time.

I realise that rehabilitation programs do exist and that some have success with offenders - especially young offenders. However I would prefer to see a system that better recognised and addressed the issue behind the offense rather than focusing on punishment.

Gone but not forgotten

I did it.

I cut 20 cm off my hair. Thats right. 20. cm.

I don't think I can really call myself LDHBE anymore but I am going to go with it anyway.

I have short hair now - and it seems to be very curly. Those who know me IRL will know that this is a regular 18 month to 2 yearly event, so I wasn't stressed out or upset by it like some people expected me to be.

I have to admit though that I can barely keep my hand off it. It is like have a new toy!