Archives for January 2007

Cousin Mike – I didn’t get enough time

January 13, 2007 by Jen at Semantically driven

This entry is going to do two things at once. First but definitely not the foremost is it’s this month’s Blogging for Books entry where I write something about time. Secondly and by no means least – it’s about my cousin Mike who was killed in a car accident a couple of days ago.

I got the phone call yesterday morning at 7.15 from my mum. She never rings me that early unless it’s something important. The first thing she said was that it wasn’t good news. Any phone call at that time of day, especially with the ‘it’s not good news’ bit makes time immediately stand still, although it makes my heart beat faster by comparison. I immediately thought something was wrong with my dad. She came straight out with the news and said that Michael (my first cousin) had been killed in a car accident last night. She didn’t have many details, just that the word was that he had a head-on with an elderly woman. She survived.

I never saw my cousin that often, but I did catch up with him on Christmas day. We exchanged mobile numbers and I had a few texts from him since then, the last one being to turn down my invite to the new year’s eve party I was going to because a karaoke party wasn’t his thing. I wish it had been now so I could get to see him one more time.

Now there will be no more times I will ever see him alive. It’s so final. Nobody had any warning that this was going to happen. Nobody got to say goodbye.

When we were kids we saw each other all the time because we went to the same school and lived pretty close together. I’ve still got a book given to me by him and his brother for Christmas one year. Then they moved away to be with their mum and we didn’t see each other as much anymore.

I went to his wedding and have seen him at various family funerals and other occasions since then. Last year when our auntie died his brother came and when I asked where Mike was he said that Mike didn’t really like funerals. I don’t need to say how ironic that is now. Whenever I saw either Mike or his brother we would always say that we should catch up more often.

Even though he didn’t live that far away – about an hour – neither of us really went out of our way to see each other as life just got in the way and he fell to the bottom of my list of priorities. I hired a holiday house near his place a couple of years ago and saw him then both at the place I was staying and at his work. Now, of course, I wish I had made more of a priority for him, but it’s too late for that now.

I’d thought after our exchange of mobile numbers on Christmas day that we’d have loads of time to catch up with each other. It’s times like this when I can see why people believe in heaven or an afterlife because it’s so hard to let go of someone who was living and trying to come to terms with their death.

Losing someone not that much older than me, and losing him so unexpectedly, just made me really really appreciate my son so much more. It just made me realise that time is precious, and time with loved ones is precious and I don’t need to worry or focus on the little day to day gripes that get me down sometimes.

Today I was texting someone and I saw his number in my phone. It’s not time to delete that yet. I’ll have to wait a while longer until it finally sinks in.

Bit of a reality tv tragic!

January 10, 2007 by Jen at Semantically driven

I have a confession to make, although anyone who might be a regular reader of this blog could already know. I kinda like reality television. I watch Australian Big Brother and have done so since it started in 2001 – see I even know which year it began. Although it’s easy to remember because that’s the year JJ was born. In fact I was in hospital having him when it was on.

While it’s summer here we are subjected to the American reality tv to tide us over till our rating’s season starts in February. Therefore I am now watching Wife Swap. Obviously I don’t mind, otherwise I wouldn’t watch it. It is very formulaic each week in that they carefully match the new wife/mom with a family who has completely different values. For example, putting a black woman with a family who calls black people by the ‘N’ word.

The episode I watched this week, the Hodge/Kolpin family, had a woman from a hunting family – ‘kill it and grill it’ matched with the vegan family. Mind you the vegan family was so because the mother wanted it that way. The husband used to eat meat and obviously found it hard to say no.

The vegan mum getting matched with the hunting family was quite entertaining, particularly with the little snippets from the oldest boy Cody. He said about his new mom, ‘My new mom eats the sun. Creepy.’ Jackie, the vegan had a theory that each morning she would go and soak up some sun as she was sure it helped suppress her appetite so eventually she would never have to eat. She maintained this would help with world hunger one day. This theory did not hold up against questioning from her new family. Really, any person in their right mind would know that humans need food to survive. Cody summed it up, ‘She’s calm but crazy. She’s calm.’

Meanwhile over at the vegan household, the kill it and grill it mom brought in a stove to cook food (vegan mom thought cooked food was unhealthy), and other numerous changes, like furniture and a tv. Vegan mom had complete control over her husband. He went out to work 15 hours a day then when he came home he also got to make his own dinner as he was home too late to eat with the others and he also got to do housework. He obviously loved his wife to put up with all of this.

And that’s the good thing about Wife Swap. The families that enter into it are obviously unhappy with some aspect of their lives so after they swap with a family who has completely opposite values, they realise their life wasn’t so bad after all. In the interim the new mom has wrought changes that are usually for the good. These changes usually mean that families spend more time together as families and enjoy each other’s company and that has to be good.

Goodbye trainer wheels

January 7, 2007 by Jen at Semantically driven

Today was the first day JJ rode his bike without relying on trainer wheels. Truth is, he had to, or not ride his bike. This is the third set of trainer wheels we’ve had and they just aren’t robust enough for a 23kg boy who relies on them, because they bend. The trainer wheels were’t aligned with the bike wheels, they were more at 45 degree angles so if he did lean on one of them, he would inevitably fall off.

This morning he wanted to go for a ride and I tried to bash the trainer wheels back into alignment but it just didn’t work. I said to him why don’t I just put the trainer wheels up a notch so that they’re there if you need them but I don’t think you do need them. Fortunately he was confident enough to give this a go. We walked the bike over to the school and after a short amount of instruction from me about how to start off with one leg resting on the ground to start with, he was away like a pro.

I was so excited, actually we both were. I was so excited I even ran alongside the bike with him here and there. Unfortunately the chain came off the bike twice. This has happened before and our friend had fixed it for us but it must be a bit loose again.

JJ has a bigger bike in the shed that’s relatively new so I might dust that off, pump up the tyres and get him going on that if this smaller bike keeps losing it’s chain. It’s had a lot of wear and tear from its previous owner, my nephew.

Now, I have to get myself a bike. I promised him that when he stopped using the trainer wheels I would get a bike for myself and we could go riding together. That day has come my friends.

Getting crafty about dinosaurs

January 6, 2007 by Jen at Semantically driven

During our six week school holiday break I am having three of those weeks off with JJ so I need to find things we can do together so we don’t tear each other’s hair out with boredom.

On New Year’s Day I wasn’t suffering from a hangover or a severe lack of sleep so I decided to find something crafty we could do together with bits and pieces we had around the house. I’m not that creative when it comes to thinking of things like this so it’s just as well there are websites like Kiddley to draw inspiration from.

I actually didn’t find the activity we ended up doing on Kiddley, but found a website called Kids Craft Weekly where we found out how to make a dinosaur from a paper plate.

We didn’t have a paper plate so I found some cardboard and used one of our plastic plates to draw a circle.

Cuttingcirclefordinosaur

We were then supposed to paint the piece of cardboard with acrylic paint. The only paints I have were cheap acrylic type paints and didn’t cover the surface very well so it looked a bit cacky but it still gave it a green base.

Paintingdinosaur

I then drew on the back as instructed to cut out the legs, head and tail, luckily found some stick pins in the toolbox and put it all together.

We didn’t have the suggested embellishments but had some bright cardboard small dinosaurs which we stapled to our stegosaurus and some feathers for good measure and we had a finished product.

We were both pretty pleased with ourselves. Here is the finished product. We’ve borrowed the image from the Kids Craft Weekly website.

Finishedstegosaurus

Along the dinosaur theme I bought tickets to go to the live ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ show on in March. It’s supposed to be pretty good and hopefully we’ll both enjoy it and JJ won’t get too scared. The dinosaurs are lifesize and pretty noisy so it could be a bit scary. I won’t be leaving the show if JJ gets scared so perhaps I’ll take some earplugs if it freaks him out too much.

Fluttering around

January 1, 2007 by Jen at Semantically driven

As we welcome in a new year, I welcome in a new blog template. I would like to do more than just flutter around this year. I’m trying the tack of reverse psychology here. I quite often find myself literally fluttering around the house like a butterfly not really achieving anything.

Here’s my old blog banner.

The new banner uses some Encre Photoshop brushes. The possibilities are almost endless with Photoshop brushes and my use of them is very basic, but I have fun doing it.

Having said above that I find myself sometimes not achieving very much, when I look back over 2006 I think I have achieved a fair amount.

My son turned 5 and started primary school. It was a big change for both of us and brought up issues that I never envisaged, ones we’re working through still and will continue to work through in 2007.

I turned 40 in 2006. I guess that’s an achievement in itself, lasting that long without any major mishap in my life. I managed to organise a 40th birthday party which was great fun for me and confirmed that I do have a bunch of great friends who will help me out, and come along to yet another party the third week in a row.

In November I posted to this blog every day for the whole month for NaBloPoMo – the whole excruciating 30 days. Goodness knows why. Perhaps because I like a challenge. Perhaps because I’ve got nothing better to do? Hmmm.

I organised my house around it being painted on most of the inside. This was a mammoth task and one that’s still not quite finished. I still haven’t had the garage sale of the things I don’t want and/or need any more. I have to have it before the end of January though, when my 16 year old nephew comes to board with me while he goes to school in Adelaide.

I joined an online readers’ group – the challenge being to read a Patrick White book – The Vivisector. I’d never been in any sort of readers’ group and I’d never read Patrick White. I found it tough going as you can see here, here and here.

Not being content with just having one blog, I turned a website that I started in 2004 into a blog. This meant I had to teach myself how to install and run WordPress. Since I released it in November I’ve managed to update it once a week – with a bit of a lapse in the last couple of weeks over Christmas.

At work I filled in for my boss twice while she was on long service leave – about four months in total. That gave me some extra stress, stress I could have done without the second time, but I managed it without too many stuff ups.

I haven’t made definite plans for 2007. Truthfully, I haven’t made any plans. I still can’t decide whether I want to try and change jobs as I’ve been in mine for nearly four years and while I quite like it it might be time for a change. But at the moment, with my son only having recently started school and with my nephew boarding here for potentially the next two years, I think one day at a time will suffice for now.

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