Gracie’s Life Experiment

Playing around with facebook and there’s an app that looks at your stats. According to Status History I have 215 posts using 3958 words, the oldest of which is “Evie has put on 16oz this fortnight – little fatty” (oh dear, what a status to remind me of – I’m guessing this was around Oct 2008). The most used words are:

#1 Evie (unsurprising really, I love my baby so much)
#2 enjoyed (pleasantly surprised at my optismism here)
#3 off (no idea why I’ve used off so much)
#4 house (probably due to having sold a house in the UK and bought a house in Aus in the last year)
#5 days (not sure probably me carping on about the number of days left till X, Y, or Z)

Poor John doesn’t get a mention though, nor Mocha. I would have also thought there would be more food/cooking related words, but I guess I must have a better vocabulary for that and had more variation in word usage.

Phewee! Last night it was so cold that I pulled down the duvet from the cupboard. Woke up this morning sweltering. It was so foggy outside when I woke up I decided against hanging the washing out too early. By 8am it was blistering sunshine and really starting to heat up. It was pretty unbearable in our backyard – aka the Suntrap (it’s a courtyard and it’s like the pavers just absorb all the heat like some sort of pizza oven).

This morning I got the Spring Cleaning bug and decided to give the place a good clean. Blitzed the kitchen thoroughly, hoovered and then mopped all the ground floor (which is tiled). My brother leant me his Kenwood Steam Mop, but sadly it had been so long since he actually used it didn’t even switch on and seemed to have some kind of chemical inside the tank corroding away. Ah well so used my trusty vileda. Must say the tiles themselves are nice and clean (and not greasy in teh kitchen or sticky under Evie’s high chair) but the grout is pretty grim. I’ve tried scrubbing it with bicarb and vinegar and also leaving Oxybleach on it but nothing seems to work. When we moved in we actually thought the grout was orangey/grey coloured but it wasn’t until we installed a dishwasher we realised the grout was originally whitey beige. Floor dried so quickly today I could walk across it within 5 mins and it was bone dry.

It got up to 33 degrees in Sydney today and according to the weatherman on 9 (who is soooo cheesy) it’s 12 deg higher than September average. It’s nuts. So for the first time this year I actually put the air conditioning on around 3pm just to make it comfortable for us in the rumpus (only used it to take the humidity off a bit).

I think I finally managed to get to sleep around 4am this morning. For some reason I was so tired that I couldn’t sleep. My mind was racing and I just kept tossing and turning. I have no idea why though as I’m (for once in my life) not worried about anything. I guess because I’m not worrying about something my subconscious psyche is telling me that I’ve forgotten to worry about something. Woke up at 8.30am as hubby let the dog out to bark her head off right outside the bedroom window (tsk tsk) and couldn’t get back to sleep after that. Now it’s about 6pm on a Saturday night and I’m almost ready to contemplate going to bed – I know, shameless isn’t it? I can’t believe my Saturday nights are now so dull.

Well it’s my 30th birthday in exactly one week’s time. I’m feeling doubley depressed this year. Firstly I’m having yet another mid-life crisis only exacerbated by hitting the end of my twenties and secondly I’m starting to miss the UK (well, not the country but my friends and family, F&F). Hubby and I reckon that we’ve hit the 3 month blues again. In March we had mega-blues as we’d been in Australia for 3 months and were still in limbo looking for a house. Now it’s been 3 months since we’ve moved into our home and now we’ve just been getting on with life. This year I’m being a real sad sack about celebrating my birthday. Just having a low-key dinner out at a nice restaurant with the family and then been invited to a BBQ at a friend’s house the following weekend. Altogether I’m feeling very pondersome today and as part of this latest mid-life crisis I’m pondering about my identity. I keep thinking that 2 years ago I had the whole world in front of me, I wanted to move to Oz and my job was fantastic and I was good at it. Fast forward I’m now in Oz (and it’s everything I hoped it would be apart from missing my F&F) but I’m now a SAHM and feel a little “underused”, not that being a Mummy is not worthwhile and hard work – I think I just miss using my brain to its full extent and the excitement of making a discovery or solving a difficult problem!

Well, it had to come to this… I’m almost at a loss to what to write in my blog as nothing much exciting has happened lately. Well, my back up is to do some random musing Whilst peeling potatoes this evening I was pondering on life, the universe and everything and almost on the cusp of discovering the question (hee hee HHGTTG ref for the uninformed) when I almost peeled my finger. This totally distracted me and my thoughts went back to potatoes (some may argue that my brain is totally potatoes too with a post like this). I’m never one for picking certain types of potato for different tasks (e.g. what potato to buy for mashing/roasting/frying etc) so I would usually buy whatever generic cheapest one per kg is (that we would be able to eat before they went off). I used to buy white potatoes in the UK and they always came washed. Now we live in Oz I noticed that a bag of unwashed/brushed potatoes is so much cheaper and thought, well I don’t mind having to wash them a bit so bought them for a while. This is a FALSE ECONOMY!! Not because they’re hard to wash, not because you get .01% of the weight as mud – but in fact those potatoes are the substandard ones that have been damaged or have mouldy bits running through. I’d estimate 20% of the potatoes had some kind of damage/squishy bits/green that after cutting off the substandard parts, you’ve whittled the potato down to the size of a crisp (potato chip in Oz). So although they’re $1 cheaper per lb, there’s almost 1 in 5 unusable. Because of all the mud on the skins of the potato you can’t see how many are crappy in the shop. So now I’m only buying washed potatoes as at least I can get a glimpse of whether they’re destined for my belly or the compost heap!

After having a bit of a heart to heart with hubby last night we went out and bought some art materials. Hubby has been on hols this week so he’s been at home during the day with me and helping to look after Evie. Now he understands why I can’t get anything done during the day (other than the constant cycle of tending to Evie, feeding, cleaning the house, playing with Evie, etc). I’ve been feeling a bit, well, underwhelmed lately. It’s strange to think one year ago I was a researcher-come-lecturer using my brain to its best capabilities and enjoying doing well in my job and having a good reputation. One year later I have a baby, we’re on the other side of the world and my brain is some sort of Swiss cheese based sieve! So after having yet another mid-life crisis and feeling underused/underappreciated and generally stuck in a rut we had a chat and I realised that I have been so busy getting on with being a housewife that I haven’t really had time to do any hobbies of my own (no me time for 8 whole months!!). This afternoon hubby took Evie off my hands completely (i.e. I had 3 hours of total time to myself) and I started a new canvas to put up in the new house. It’s of a figure looking out to sea, which sums up my current feelings that rather than being trapped on the beach I can actually look at the broader picture and enjoy life rather than spend the whole time going round in circles looking down at my own feet. This is my first painting that actually has a human form in it and also my first using acrylics (I’m too stingy to fork out for oil paint as I know that I have tubes and tubes of it coming in the container).

Wow, I can’t believe it’s December already.  This year has been manic.  This time last year we’d only just got our visas for Australia.  One year on and we have validated our visas, sold our house, booked the removals and in 3 weeks we’ll be immigrants!!  This time last year we didn’t even know about Evie’s impending arrival.  Who would have thought I’d be sat here with a snoring 4 month old baby in the other room.  Oh dear I can feel yet another mid-life crisis coming on !!