Job Hunting

I am job hunting.

Job hunt mess on my dining room table

It is a very long time since I have looked for a job.  I have pretty much been self employed or a stay at home Mum since the 1990's.

Writing a resume has been interesting.

Meeting selection criteria with relevant and recent examples even more so!

I don't even know if I want a full time or part time job.  I just know I need a job.

The Workaholic is still unemployed so we desperately need an income.

It will be a big change for all of us.  The boys in particular.  They have always had me here.

It will be a massive period of adjustment.

Please keep your fingers and toes crossed for me.  I really need a job!!

Any tips for a Mum who has been out of the workforce for a very long time?

The Sky is Falling

Today I am running around like Chicken Little, totally sure the sky is falling.

Out my front window...

Maybe it isn't, but just maybe it is.

Things are still tough in the House of O.  No work on the horizon. No contract payout agreement in the offing.

I've started applying for jobs, I'm selling on eBay and we are revisiting the idea of an interstate move.

The last six years of knocks has left me battered and bruised and completely unable to rise above the crap and well, quite frankly be my usual sunny self.  I knew it would get to me sometime.  My Mum says she can't believe I've made it this far without cracking.

The Little Man is reacting to the tension and getting into trouble at school.  He's grumpy, he's teary, he's a monster, he's a sad little boy.  It's so frustrating that his first year of school has been marred by all this drama.  The me I wish I could find, would say "It will all work out, this crap happens for a reason."  The me who is here right now says "When will we get a break, I just can't take any more drama or bad news."

It's not even the money worries that have pushed me to the brink today.  It's the fact that The Workaholics Dad went into hospital last Monday and for six days none of his FOUR siblings (or his Dad for that matter), bothered to tell him.  He found out on Saturday morning because he phoned his Dad because he hadn't heard from him and he answered his mobile from his hospital bed.  His family just do my head in.

I don't have anything clever to say.

I just thought writing this down and posting it would be cathartic and explain in some way why I am still absent.

I hope you are all doing it a bit easier than me!

Urban Wildlife Leads me to Contentment

Over the last couple of weeks my boys and I have noticed two little finches hanging out in the carpark of St Ives Village Shopping Centre.  They are very sweet.  They have built themselves a nest on a service pipe above a car space I like due to only one side of my car being exposed to randon carpark scratches.

I love that my boys have this close up opportunity to view some urban nesting.  We are checking every couple of days for baby birds.  It has even meant I have changed coffee shops so we can check on the nest each morning.

Last week at home we left half a watermelon (getting too old for us to eat) out on the side lawn so that the local wildlife could eat it.  Each morning the boys would watch from the sun room as the sun rose and the possums would get in a last nibble before running off up their trees and into bed for the day.  Then during the day the parrots, cockatoos and lorikeets all came down to visit.  The local Kookaburras hung around to check on the fuss.  The boys just loved it.

I grew up in a terraced house on the edge of Newtown, Enmore, Stanmore.  We had a clothesline on a tiny patch of grass with an old dunny out the back.  There was no wildlife unless you count the rats and winos that sometimes slept on our front step.

I was lucky though.  My grandparents retired to Huskisson in Jervis Bay.  My parents promptly bought a caravan on Currambene Creek.  My life was transformed.  Each Friday afternoon my brother and I would get picked up from school and travel down to Husky for the weekend.  We’d then come home either very late on Sunday night or first thing Monday morning.  I grew up in the bush.  We made cubby houses, BMX tracks and swam in the creek.  We fished, took the tinny down the creek to Callala and had sausage sizzles on the beach.  At night after dinner we'd sit by camp fires and tell stories or play sardines around the caravan park and surrounding bush.  I had an amazing group of friends, most from Wollongong, with like minded parents.  We had freedom.  It was an idyllic childhood.  It was the 1970s & 80’s.

Things have changed and as much as I would love my kids to have the freedom that I had growing up, it can’t happen.  The Workaholic needs to be in the city for work and usually works on Saturdays meaning a similar weekend plan just can’t work for us.  The Little Man had a fabulous time in Huskisson at the Workaholics family holiday house (yes, this is where we met) with his big cousins over Christmas 2010, he really blossomed experiencing a little of the freedom I had as a child.  It is such a pity we can’t do that more often.

I feel blessed though, to have ended up on Sydney’s Upper North Shore.  It is the best of both worlds in many ways.  Our yard is big and just a bit wild.  We get lots of wildlife in the yard and there are trees to climb.  The city is just a train trip away and the schools here are good.  I wish they could have more freedom to roam, but at the moment I am quite content with this urban wildlife they are experiencing.

It has been a long and winding path that has led us as a family to where we are, but today, while looking at those little birds making a home in a carpark, I realised how grateful I am to be just where we are.

The House of O is content and to be honest I had almost forgotten what that felt like.

Are you content in your little patch of the planet?

Take yourselves over to Maxabella Loves... for a bigger dose of Grateful.  It is very good for the soul!!

52 Weeks of Grateful - Joining in late...

I have not written a post for Maxabella's 52 Weeks of Grateful since, well since it became 52 Weeks of Grateful!  This week I have been reading through my own blog and decided I should re-enter this linky as it is a good thing to think about being grateful instead of just letting the good stuff in life pass you by unnoticed.

Reading through one of the things that struck me is the sadness I have about the negative situation that exists with The Workaholics family.  See these posts here for a bit of the back story if you are wondering, but feel free to avoid the negativity!  It is sad that my boys don't have a functional relationship with their cousins, Aunts and Uncle or Poppy on that side of the family, but I am so grateful for the family that we have made and chosen for ourselves.  The people who we have chosen to be in our family.  The friends that we consider our family now.  Some of them are our cousins and their kids (isn't it weird how sometimes you need that little bit of distance to appreciate a family tie?).  They are real constants in my kids lives and I think that is really important and I am grateful for that every single day. 

Alain Pelletier

I am grateful every day for our continued good health.  I see situations around me where a parent or a child is ill and it breaks my heart.  I pray we can continue without one of these stories being included in our family history.

It was a struggle for me to be completely comfortable with the choice of school that we made, but it turns out that it was a good one and I am so grateful that people pushed me into it.  The Little Man is thriving.  His teacher is in tune with him and his specific needs.  He is blossoming.  It is like finding something that had been lost for so long you almost forgot what it looked like.  The Little Man is back.  So thankful for the weird and twisting route that led us here, I can not imagine him anywhere else.

Grateful can not describe how I feel about the Workaholic's work situation.  He has been so pro active and even though he could not find a job in Sydney, he chose not to go interstate and instead made himself a job.  So great.  Such a relief all round.  I don't think he or the kids would have liked him working away.

On a similar note, I am so grateful for all of the people who supported us over the Summer of Unemployment both financially and spiritually.  You can really tell who your friends are in times like these.  I love you all, especially you, Mum.  My Mum was so in tune with what was happening she would somehow manage to be on the phone before I even knew I needed to talk to her.  In my Mum's true form, she would have answer to whatever the problem was, prepared and ready to put into action.  She is AMAZING.

Anyway that's a few of the things I am grateful for this week, there are many more of course but I am a bit teary about the last one and I need to stop.

Take yourselves over to Maxabella Loves... for a bigger dose of Grateful.  It is very good for the soul!!