op-shop roundup

Here are the pictures of some of the more recent clothes I have found from my most favourite op-shop - http://www.savers.com.au/

The first outfit I bought last year actually - it has been one of the best bargains I have ever achieved there. I bought it for $4

The next outfit I bought this year and spoke about earlier in my blog - my handy friend unpicked the unsightly front part of it - I love the colour. Agai5n another steal at around $5

The next are some pants I managed to pick up on saturday - they looked almost brand new, sportsgirl brand - $4

Lastly this beautiful dress that I bought on saturday for $5.99 - I love, love, love it.

Lastly I thought I would add in a picture of my sleeping children, all 3 of them. As you can see our cat Bastian sleeps with the boys (who are demanding to sleep together atm) so it can get squeezy in there.

Noah is toilet training - for the last 3 days he has been doing all of his toileting on a potty, with no accidents whatsoever, he wants no help - he needs no reminding, just off he goes. Today he went to Childcare and only had one accident , my little one is growing up.

bugger, bum. Pictures aren't working, will upload later.

40 things before I'm 40

I wrote this list about a year ago when aged 30 and I thought I would add it here.

1. Graduate from university
2. Find fufilling employment
3. buy a house
4. Have my mother and stepfather live with us on the property
5. have another child (and have me a homebirth)
6. Be 65kg
7. Be 61kg
8. Travel to Canada to see my SIL, BIL and my little niece
9. Travel to England to see my Dad and travel to Slovenia to meet my stepfathers family (as well as the obligatory trips throughout Europe
10. Travel to Japan
11. Travel to Hong Kong
12. Live in another state
13. Live in another country
14. Go on a romantic catch up holiday with James and James alone
15. Learn how to ride a horse
16. Overcome my fears
17. Go on a holiday with my mum
18. Bush camp
19. Learn how to sew
20. Enjoy a weekend away with my best friend
21. Watch someone birth a baby
22. Take my children overseas
23. Ride a motorbike
24. Run 5kms
25. Upgrade from the bogon mobil
26. Buy a new bicycle
27. Own a new couch
28. Not be reliant on Centrelink
29. Have a 'no holds barred' shopping trip
30. Learn about interior decorating
31. Learn about the stockmarket and trading
32. Learn how to successfuly garden
33. Attempt to become self sufficient
34. Learn to love and appreciate myself
35. Attempt a second language
36. Holiday on a houseboat
37. Tattoo my body again
38. Face a great fear (like skydiving - I hate flying and heights)
39. Enjoy my 10 year wedding anniversary
40. Enjoy my 15 year wedding anniversary

I'll be back with my latest update from Savers, when I can get the stoopid camera to work.

Just a short note..

To say I've finished my lit review (finally! I know I've been whinging about it for ages) and it has given me a push to start talking about something that is continuing to interest me the intersection between abortion and miscarriage. I have just finished combing through a number of critical texts devoted to women's health and do you think I could find much information about miscarriage? Pages (and sometimes chapters) devoted to the analysis of abortion politics/medicalisation of pregnancy/use of ultrasound to hide the mother in abortion politics etc, but nothing more than cursory mentions about "spontaneous abortions".

One position put forward by Linda Layne in an article she wrote in "Feminist studies" in 2006 was due to the difficulty of the fight to give women access to safe and legal abortions, a side effect has been;

[that]..it has been difficult to acknowledge that many women experience a pregnancy loss as the loss of a "baby" without apparently concurring with anti-abortion advoctates regarding the status of embryos and fetuses. This puts feminists in a bind, and as a consequence, feminists have been inclined to ignore the issues.

Reading that gave me my 'ah-ha' moment. I couldn't understand as I read through my pile of books just why, when contraception, assisted conception, childbirth and especially abortion had whole essays dedicated to them - why miscarriage remained still hidden. And this is indicative of the wider invisibility by society and how they process about what makes a baby, when a baby is alive. And I am not immune from that. I am a very avid supporter of Australia providing access to safe and legal abortions, so perhaps this is why it struck such a chord with me - I am being challenged, by this research to critically analyse my own position.

Whats clear from the research about miscarriage, is that ambiguity and inconsistency revolve around what it is, how to define and what even to call it. Medically it is described as 'abortions' when clearly that terminology for women could be offensive to say the least. One piece of medical writing suggested that the term 'miscarriage' be replaced by 'early pregnancy FAILURE', (Bourne & Condous, 2006 - Handbook of early pregnancy care) handbook of early pregnancy care, yeah nice sensitive suggestion there - how is that terminology more useful? So, now I'm ready. I'm ready to find out from the women themselves, this is going to be very interesting.

Anyway - off again - Jude invited one of his most favourite people over tonight - Em and she wants us to go out, just James and I, for a catch up. So I need to rest (I was up till 3.30AM this morning writing furiously) and I am actually also heartily SICK of looking at the computer.

I'll chat again soon. I hope my discussion of this topic has not caused any hurt or pain to any of the readers here. I know the subject matter can be distressing, so I try not to talk about it too much - but I really did want to share that as I think it is vital to the understanding of where my research wants to go.

Take care xx

p.s - Sue - no hard feelings, thanks for apologising (I had no idea you read this blog lol) - I'm sorry too.

9 days...

Since I have been to the gym. I'm flabbing up, I can just feel it.

the journey

I just found my first grey hair about 10 minutes ago. It all began innocently enough while I took a quick toilet break from my uni work, as I was washing my hands I looked up at myself in the mirror and caught sight of something, distinctly different from the background of my dark brown hair. Could it be? I grabbed it and held it up for confirmation. Yes! A long silver, thick hair strand.

Confirmation that I am growing older. Has anyone else found their first grey hair yet? What ages were you? I'm 31.5 - James is almost all grey, but I have had none, until today that is.

my other love...

Savers.
I've mentioned this store before, but I just have to mention it again. Last week after after my physio appt I decided to swing by Savers for a quick look see. I bought a beautiful white dress, it was quite expensive by Savers standards - $17 but it is brand new. I ended up wearing it to the trivia night that I mentioned in the post below with brown chunky belt and boots. I think I looked like a legend, but I always feel good wearing boots - there is something about the noise that they make. Now the reality of what I looked like could be totally different LOL!

I wasn't a 100 per cent sure about what it really looked like, but took it home and James went ga-ga over it. I love Savers, seriously - there is a lot of dusty tragic stuff, but dig deep enough and treasure you will find. More than half of my wardrobe is from Savers and it gives me the opportunity to feel like I don't have to wear the same clothes for years on end, especially as I have lost weight and all of my old clothes no longer fit. Next year when I have more money, I still think I will be amongst them all at Savers on a saturday morning.

Yes, I'm still writing my literature review (I swear I would make a great PhD student!!) but I hope to have it finished today and then I can spend more than 5 minutes here writing lol. Hey, you try and meld miscarriage from a nursing/medical/sociological/psychological point of view, then throw Social Work into the mix - it is BLOODY difficult!

thoughts about post december

I've been toying about going to work for DHS next year (child protection). I've been considering that it may be good grounding for me as a practitioner and I am both attracted and repulsed by the thought of working there. Strange huh?

Well today we had a 4 hour lecture about child abuse. I felt physically sick and am now re-evaluating my previous position. The worst part is, tomorrow I have to hear more.

I don't want to :( .

Saturday night we had our trivia night and I had a little bit too much to drink. That always happens when I am around people that I like, and our table was in hysterics for most of the night. ESPECIALLY when the guy sitting next to me remembered the acronym to KIT (and he was the only person in the whole place who knew what it stood for)! Bravo Dan!! We kicked on from the trivia night (that just sounds WRONG) to a local wine bar in the village and stayed on there until they kicked us out. We stumbled in the door at 2am. Luckily for me I'm married to the worlds most considerate man and when I woke up on sunday morning, dishevelled - smudged mascara et al, he presented me with panadol, water and banana pancakes smothered in maple syrup. (I did really want McDonalds though but whats a girl to do).

I then had to pay more penance by going to a 5 yo party, upside was I got to eat junky party food and drink soft drink. Aah. To counteract that, this morning I was up at 6am to do my cycle class, before attending caulfield to learn about

genericism (gripping) and then the lecture on child abuse. Luckily there were no slides involved like my other less fortunate friends have had to experience, but the descriptions were enough.

Anyway, I've been out all night at my committee meeting, so I'm off to bed, ni-night.

am here...

Just insanely busy.

Presentation done today - ok, but yes I jibbered on a bit and was a sweaty woman at the end of it. I was told I was incredibly passionate about the topic. I've realised just why I am feeling so nervous about this research. I'm scared I'm not going to do it the justice it deserves.

I will come in later and offer something more substantial, but I have a killer week coming up.

1 party saturday
1 trivia night saturday night for Kinder
1 party sunday
Uni monday - presentations skills etc
chairing kinder committee meeting on monday night
Uni tuesday
supervision meeting tuesday
uni wednesday
uni thursday
uni friday
lit review due.

I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. 6 months to go. 6 months to go.

Tonight I just want to flop on the couch and talk to my beautiful husband.

Could this be the answer I am looking for?

70 per cent dark chocolate! I swear one teeny tiny square is all it is taking for me to get my hit. I literally cannot eat anymore than one piece. I think I may have found my saviour!

Is there anything..[and a quick update]

..more cringe worthy than being forced to record a 10 minute interview which you must review over and over again in order to write a 1000 word critical analysis? And then the final kick in the bum? Sending said DVD with your analysis to your Lecturer so they can watch it too! Horrors of horrors!

Awwwwwful, I can't bear to watch myself. I hate being watched. I find it almost vomit worthy actually. I'm actually wondering whether this is a serious defect within myself. I think it is linked to my confidence or lack thereof, but also the contrived falseness of the situation. What I record and what the lecturers see is NOT what I am like when I am with a client. I know this is a very important thing to do in my profession; observation and critical reflection, but really I'm not sure I will ever be able to be comfortable.

Oh anyway, it was only worth 20 per cent! Anyway onto brighter news. I've finished work for this semester! I still have to continue working however, but this time it is all on my honours from now on. Next week I have to present an hour long lecture to interested parties about what I have done up to now... picture this...'blah blah blah,... nothing nothing nothing' repeat for ONE whole hour, which includes opening up the floor to questioning! Um should I mention my lack of confidence in the paragraph above here. I can talk underwater, and up there I will, but with great big sweat rings appearing in the underarm area and a lot of rabbiting along about nothing - anxious chatter if you will. Then as soon as I've finished I'll sit down and the negative self talk will begin 'that was crap. People are going to know that you are a faker.' and then later on that night in bed I will still be concentrating on something that I said (or didn't whichever the case may be). Can you tell I'm looking forward to this? I'm guessing from reading this back I might need to work on the confidence thing.

Family news - James got an incredibly favourable teaching review back, saying that his calm and soothing style had engaged the children well. Above all he was a kick-arse teacher* Jude is a social butterfly, he had us dragged around to 2 parties over the weekend, there is one this friday and today there were another two invites in his pigeon hole at Kinder. Sheesh kid, not so popular alright, we can't afford all of these presents! Noah-Boah is recovering from some hideous cold which turned secondary and for his illustrous efforts in being unwell, was rewarded with his first prescription of antibiotics. Poor little Boah.

House news - we had the inspection, was told to expect up to a $20 per week rental increase (going up to market rate would have seen this place going up by about $100 a week, and $20 is stretching it a bit for us). We nervously awaited to hear from the real estate about whether we would be offered a new lease...and today we DID! WOOHOOO! One less stress to worry about, we are so chuffed because we adore this area and would be devestated if we had to move. And we only have 4 months of paying higher rent before we graduate and earn income!!

Bogan mobil news - yesterday the brakes failed, yes they bloody well failed! Luckily James was only reversing the car from our house, so there were no children in the car and he was able to safely bring it to a stop. C'mon bogin mobil, get us over the line! Remind me to upload some photos of the state that our bogin mobil is in and see why Jude complains about the stinky old car that he is forced to be a passenger in! Well Jude back in the good old days when you were a baby, we didn't even HAVE a car. In fact we brought you home from hospital by catching a TRAM! HA!

Gymming news - not getting there as much as I would like, but still managing to reduce. I have no idea why. I am still eating chocolate but my new tactic is to eat only dark chocolate as I eat less. Tonight I had some 70 per cent stuff and I only managed to consume a tiny square! This might be the new trick.

Wow, big update and lots of news there. Best be off, I'm doing *stuff* with photos.


* may not have said this in so many words, but the intent was there I'm sure ;) .