incremental progress

I should listen to myself

I keep thinking I need to slow down, and stress down. So I take on another course, buy a house, move cities, pressure self to FINISH THESIS NOW, etc etc. Another course; WHAT WAS I THINKING?? I am now doing a seCdary teachers refresher course, which is on monday evenings and all day saturday. So poor hubby has to trail round on Saturday minding the kids but not going too far from where the course is so bubs still gets his boob juice. Why do I do these things to myself?? And him???

Today an actual legal program was posted to me, and with the full knowledge of the IT people who hold the license I loaded the program on my computer. Feels really wierd. You know, legal! But by gum, she's a wee cracker. Churns out kazillions of numbers and draws graphs, and makes perfect sense to me. Wicked bananas.

Perfect baby blots copybook!

Friday morning h spewed all over the bed and so I had to wash all the bedding including the mattress cover. And at night he spewed again while in the high chair.

But today, Sunday, he feels much better and his sense of humour has returned. Once again everything is funny to him. Friday was a hard day for his mum, as any time I put him down he screamed/cried. Now he is able to cruise the house again amusing himself.

Friday afternoon I put him down and he stopped breathing for a while - long enough that I watched him saying breathe, baby BREATHE. But not long enough to panic. I think it was just temper at being put back in in his bed again. Scarey though. Took him to the doctor just to make sure after that! His chest is clear and he is getting healthy. Back to childcare for him tomorrow.

Friend was having us come to lunch, but rang to cancel due to family crises. Haven't heard from her to find out what the crisis was.

There you go - two spellings of one word in one paragraph - can you tell I've been drinking!

The trip that was

We left Upper Hutt at 7 in the morning with all the stuff, and both kids in the car and everything. It meant we got to the airport in good time, and no-one got grumpy. I checked the luggage, went to the little girls room, and reported to the checkin lounge place before the first boarding call.

Flight fine, kid had a good time playing with keys, feeding, making friends with the neighbour and the people behind us. Walk out of the airport, spot Phreq, present her with h and go back in to get luggage.

No luggage of mine appears. None.

Ask at counter - she says in very cheerful voice, "Oh, its coming on the next flight. It won't be long." And looks on the computer to find it will be two hours. I look out the window to see Phreq communicating with the parking police. She can't move with h - no car seat, see? So the car moves to less lively parking, and we go to demand a car seat. And lo and behold, they do have one at the airport, and my luggage will be delivered in a taxi, and THERE ARE SOLUTIONS.

Off I go to be intellectual, or try to with no papers, or computer disks and far too much adrenaline on board. Its moderately successful. Phreq and h go off and do bonding stuff. Sounds like they had a good time too.

When I said to Phreq I was going to do public transport out to Dunsandel she replied "Oh no, you're not! I'll drop you off, and go visit my friend in Methven". How fabulously kind is that?? So we didn't have to get 28 kg of luggage onto a bus to Lincoln, instead we arrived by personal taxi. SO MUCH EASIER.

And the next morning spare grandad Brian drove us both to the supervisor's house, which started to look like a train station as people popped in and out with stuff I'd left behind, the kid coming and going for feeds and sleeps. Supervisor was fantastic, and very cool about baby. Baby likes supervisor, supervisor likes baby. Another potential worry disappears (supervisor has no kids of his own, is bachelor, and so was potentially very baby nervous). Brian spends the whole day helping out with h.

We load up important disk into computer. Won't go. Fiddle for a while. Definitely WON'T GO. I sit there thinking, oh boy, this is a disaster. But no, there are other less sexy programs that do the same stuff. Less sexy, but more powerful. So results in some ways will be better. We create mathematical model (and it really is we, I had useful stuff to offer, thank god) and run it, and results (ten thousand of them at a time) are generated. All is good.

Stayed in old folks home with a spinning friend, and was very pleasant and relaxing. Molly is very undemanding and welcoming. h Ctinued to charm all within range!

Phreq delivers us to the airport. Thanks again. Flight home completely without incident. All luggage arrives, baby sleeps the whole way.

h has started coughing and has a snot issue so we visited the doctor on the way home. He has a fever (39.4) and a weezy chest and elevated heart rate. Antibiotics are being adminstered to good effect, but he is home today.

WINZ need proof I'm studying. How do you do that??? I'm getting another letter from the supervisor. If I was an undergrad, I'm not sure who would help out with that.

I've loaded the new stats program on the computer, and run the model. All worked. HOW LIKELY IS THAT?? And I made chocolate chip cookies this morning with h, who likes licking the cake mixer things. (but not when they are rotating - just kidding) I probably shouldn't give them to him, but he definitely thought it was the work of a kind mother, and he didn't seem to care whether it was responsible.

So that was the trip that was. The only reason it worked was because of the kindness of friends. I'm really grateful.

Hi honey, I'm home

Big shout out to Phreq for making the trip to Christchurch actually work. Without her ferrying me round the garden city and looking after the spratlet, I would have achieved nothing but a nervous breakdown. What an extremely lovely person! (Oh, and Giffy, I'm in Upper Hutt usually.)

So I now have a computer model which tells me stuff I want to know, and soon I will see if I can load the appropriate program on the computer and make it go at home. Should be interesting. (Hah!)

Took h to doctor, and he is now on antibiotics to clear up the fever, the cough and the yukky nose. Poor spratlet, fancy having such a nasty mother as to make you travel when you are sick. But I could tell he was super happy to be home, and to see his dad again.

Will blog more thoroughly tomorrow, even though I will have bubs at home for the day rather than the childcare thing (see above para...)

Just another day

House went unCditional today, so we are now the proud owners of a mortgage. And a beautiful house. Today I wrote a cheque for ten thousand dollars. Heh.

Put my name down to 'refresh' as a seCdary school teacher at Vic. I'm not sure that me and h can do this! There's a lot of hours for him to be boobless.

Chap 6 is nearly done, and NOW I find I seem to have imagined some statistics. I've even quoted p values and degrees of freedom, but I don't have a printout with them there. What wid dat? What kind of imagination does that?

I've asked to withdraw from the woolcraft festival (boo-hoo) as I can't afford to go anymore. (see first point!) I'm not going to the dentist for the same reason.

Phone chick

I seem to be spending a lot of time on the phone at the moment. I am talking to lawyers (!) and agents, inspectors and my mummy. Thank goodness for mummy, sometimes I think she is the only one who is really on my side. Though the lawyer might be.

Supposed to be at the dancing committee meeting, but R has gone to sign language, and I am babysitting, and so I am not at my final meeting. Dangnabbit.

Its damn hard to Ccentrate on the thesis. The phone keeps ringing.

Going going sold

Yeah, looks like we got the house. They have accepted our offer, and so now if all the reports stack up and if we haven't upset the bank somehow, looks like we are going to be debt for a long long time. I need a job as soon as we arrive in Wanganui. Anything. And yes, I'm a bit worried about the money, but I very happy about that house. I might be eating a few ration packs for the first few weeks.

Had a good weekend at the farm. And they are selling us a half a pig for the replacement cost (ie another piglet), and have given us some more chops, which is helping the budget a lot. Good friends.

Children tired but happy after weekend in the sun and fresh air. Shona happy as we attacked her garden with a chainsaw, and ugly plants have left and attractive plants were revealed.

I'm unable to Ccentrate hard on the thesis, but must, as I need to finish up and get me a job...

ZEBRAS

And a good day was had by all...

housing progress and graphs

The supervisor suggested I put colour in my graphs, pretty them up a bit, for the thesis. Seems mad, but more fun than a total re-write, so I have done them in the Otago colours (he wanted black and red, but admitted he knew he wouldn't get that...).

They have counter-signed the offer on the house. Now we have to decide what to do next. Ctrol freak me feels much better now the ball is back in our court.

Happy birthday to me

The husband is just serving up my flash birthday dinner, but it doesn't look like I'm getting a house for my birthday - they haven't replied formally to our offer, and haven't countersigned yet, so really no news at all.

Better go eat.

For all the knitters out there

Look at this

Excellent!

On the house front we have put in an offer on the house you can see here and use the code 692GO We finally found a house that both of us are excited about - we know what we like now too, so if we don't get this one at least we will not be going to Wanganui to see everything that is listed, but only the style of house we like.

On the thesis front, I've just sent a chapter off for review. Heh!

On the family front the zebra costumes came out great and the boys were much admired. The trip to the zoo yesterday was good and really well organised.

But no, I'm not sleeping well. Nor surprising really with the heat, the thesis the house and the family stuff to do. I haven't got time to sleep.

But I know the way to Wanganui

Raced up and back in the heat yesterday to look at the perfect house, which turned out to be not perfect. It has a lot of stairs and is not fenced, and also has a high deck, so it is dangerous for h and also for our dog. In that order, even though the dog has been here for 10 years, and the kid only 8 months. We could still buy it, or the other one that I like, or even another one in a border line area that has fences, lots of rooms, and a pool and spa.

Or we could wait ay? But the husband isn't keen on waiting and so we are going to Wanganui tomorrow this time in an Army car with air Cditioning. But h is not happy about the idea, I can tell even now. Neither am I actually.

I'm not sure I'm really ready for this

According to the supervisor, I have only about two weeks full time work, if that, to have 7/8 chapters completed and ready to hand in. And I realised I'm pretty ambivalent about this project coming to an end. I like being a student, and after doing a PhD there is no more studenting to be done, unless I start again in a new subject. If I do start again, then it is pretty obvious why - its not about a job, its about the study itself. Everyone will know, internet. It has always been about the study, with a thin (mighty thin) veneer of job usefulness, but I haven't fessed up to that before. So I might have to give up study, and certainly this is the end of full time studenting. Any further study will be part time.

Mind you the thought of being able to do some of the other things that interest me in my non-working time like sewing spinning knitting painting gardening and walking and swimming and all has a lot of appeal.

In summary: my idyllic life is working as a student about 40 hours a week, and doing other stuff the rest of the time. Bugger working. The only problem is that I like having money too.