Where the heart is…

Posted on April 20, 2012 by suggieblue

We’re back.

Home.

If home really is where the heart is, then I’m not sure I’m home.

I don’t know if it’s Tassie’s cooler temperatures,

[A shock to the system when coming from consecutive 40 degree days]

[Snowflake and I enjoying the cooler weather]

the beautiful scenery,

[Taken from the top of Mt Victoria, North East Tasmania]

[The view from Ronny's Creek, Cradle Mountain, Tasmania]

the fresh air,

[There's something about sea air]

[Fresh and pure mountain air...]

the abundance of fresh food

[Our veggie haul in just a few hours]

or just the fact that all my side of the family is there,

[Snowflake with her Great-Grandparents. We didn't think she'd get to meet her Great-Grandad!]

[Getting to know one of her Great-Great Aunts]

[Bonding with her youngest cousin (and Grandmum, who's holding them)]

but every time I visit Tassie I leave a little more of my heart behind.

It’s almost been ten years since I left.

I guess, for now, home is where the husband is. And child. I’d be lost without them.

I am lucky though. I might not have any of my family here in WA (now that ESD has moved back to Tas), but I do have my in-laws (IL’s), and my three best friends. Well… Only two are here at the moment, but one is making the trek across the Nullarbor with her new husband in two weeks. She’ll be here for at least a year so it means I’ll have my three BFF’s – my three bridesmaids – in the same state as me. That’s gotta count for something right?

And my IL’s? Well, they really are the best IL’s someone could ask for. They support us all in whatever we want to do. We have dinner there every Sunday night and they’re always there if we need…well…anything really. Hell…They even bought us the house we live in. And they’re infatuated with Snowflake. What grandparent isn’t infatuated with their first grandchild?

Anyway, to keep my mind occupied so I don’t pine for my family in Tassie too much I’ve set myself some goals.

Lose weight
Blog more
Make my blog more interesting.
Increase blog readership and Facebook likes
Get the garden in shape
Get the house in shape

These are pretty big goals. You might have read about the weight I need to lose in Delusional: My Ass. It’s a significant number. It always has been. And the blogging stuff? Well they go hand-in-hand really.

To help myself get there I’m going to break them down into smaller goals and post them on here. Just not right now. Right now I’m busy preparing for…well…working on my goals.

I need to learn how to prioritise my time better. They don’t call me the ‘Queen of Procrastination’ for nothing.

Actually ‘they’ don’t. I do. I’ve always been good at it. See? I’m doing it right now. Instead of figuring how to end this little post, I’m prattling on.

Procrastinating.

So…I’m off to work on my goals. Luckily there’s a lot to work on so I don’t think about Tassie. And that lovely new semi-rural land development just out of Launceston I’m trying to convince Mr.SuggieBlue to buy…

Candice

Holiday’s, Hiring & Heels: Reason 1 of neglection.

Posted on November 28, 2011 by suggieblue

It’s been a pretty crazy seven weeks since I got back from my awesome, relaxing holiday to Tassie. As I write this, I can’t believe it was almost two months ago! I didn’t do much while I was there. Just chilled with the family and took lots of photos. You can check out some of them in my October Photo Challenge – there’s lots of spring photos on there! Spring is my favourite time of the year, and I really, really miss Tassie spring’s. Especially since my mum had her garden landscaped. Most of my photos were taken around her garden, around the farm or at our family seaside holiday spot of Tomahawk. When I say seaside, I mean the house/shack is no more than 20 metres from the beach. Here’s a picture I took looking through the window while sitting having lunch one day.

: Tomahawk Bay from Villa Vista @ Tomahawk

You can see that the beach is just there. Right in front of you. Oh – and it’s available as a holiday rental too, for those who might be interested in a quiet family retreat to one of Tassie’s best kept secrets. Maybe Three L’il Princesses can do a post on it for her My Tasmanian Backyard Series! Let me know – I’ll put you in touch with my mum. I’m sure Nobashake has some suggestions too!

So anyway…

I’m officially on maternity leave. According to my iPhone app, I have 28 days until Miss Snowflake is due and she’s the size of a Crenshaw Melon. Whatever the hell that is! It’s exciting… and scary. Are we ready? Around the house – no, but mentally I think so. We don’t really have any ‘plan’ so to speak. Just give birth and do the best we can. We’ll take all advice given to us on board and take what we want from it. Personally, I think having a strict birthing plan or parenting plan can set yourself up for failure – or certainly make things harder for yourself because you’re not living up to certain expectations. That’s just my opinion (and Mr.SuggieBlue’s).

The week I got back from holidays, we hired a new person at work to replace me. It was hard work teaching him – working as an Optical Dispenser isn’t just about selling people glasses. There’s a whole lot more to it, and you need have a whole lot of knowledge stored in your little (or big) brain. Thankfully after working there for four years, I’ve managed to grasp much of this knowledge – though there is still a whole heap I don’t know.

So we were training New Guy in the basics first. Reception. How to answer the phone, take messages, book appointments, mark jobs as received and collected, process payments and do the banking at the end of the day. Every little thing we usually do during the day, we held off doing so we could show him how to do it, meaning we often had a big backlog of stuff left to do. For those of you who have trained someone new in a job, you’ll know what I’m talking about. You end up extremely behind in all your jobs; but you patiently deal with it because it’s all going to be worth it in the end. Right?

Well… it’s a lovely theory, but not what happened in this case. New guy quit the week I left. He quit on the Monday and I finished up on Friday. For five weeks we’d patiently explained things over and over again (he seemed to be a mere male who could only process one piece of information at a time), and then he quit citing he didn’t want to do sales or marketing. Helloooo? You’re in retail. We sell things. What did you expect? “Grr” is really all I can say to that. Five weeks of training for nothing. Five weeks of paying two people to do one job for nothing. My boss was pretty stressed and upset about it – since we’re coming into the busiest time of the year, and another staff member is leaving after Christmas, leaving just my boss (the main Optometrist), a casual/part timer who can only work max 4 days a week, and a casual Optometrist. We’re all trying to think positive, for our own sakes, hoping it’s a blessing in disguise and that someone better suited is just around the corner.

That’s my first reason for being so busy and neglecting my SuggieBlue readers. I really am very sorry! By the time I got home from training New Guy and trying to catch up on things that didn’t get done as a result of said training, I was completely and utterly exhausted and couldn’t be bothered doing anything other than eating and going to bed.

So here I am. In my third week of maternity leave and it’s only now that I have time to scratch myself. Some say I’ve been doing some serious nesting. I’m not so sure about that, but stay tuned to make the judgement yourself! Oh! And if you’re in for a laugh, you can also find out the answer to this equation: