I love it!!

I'm sure you're all surprised to see me writing right now. Especially given that lately the only time I hit this old blog up is when summoned by the great Karen at Baking in a Tornado to write for one of her awesome series.  Well it's almost 11 o'clock at night, and I'm the only one still out of bed, and I've suddenly been hit with the urge to write to you guys. So firstly sorry for my neglect, and thank you for your patience. I hope tonight's inspiration is not short lived and that I can get back into the swing of things. Especially since I feel so good right now. It's been a long time in the making but I can honestly say I love life right now. It feels amazing to finally say that I am happy. This doesn't mean I spend my days singing from the roof tops, or even that I smile 24 hours a day. I still have bad moods, I still get tired, and I have a chest cold right now, so even at my absolute best things aren't perfect, but they are still pretty damned good.

So just because I am such a giving and thoughtful person, I thought I'd share the love with you guys, and let you know what the go is around here, and why I'm so darn happy now.  So the first bit of good news is I finally finished my studies. I have no idea whether or not I've passed yet, I won't get the results from the final exam until next month, but I've submitted my application to graduate next year with the rest of the class, and all I can do now is sit and wait for some kind of confirmation.  The final exam was nothing short of a shambles, first off I missed the exam date because of a screw up with messages from the school, and I had to organise with my tutor to "re-sit" the exam. Then on the day I had the exam booked the servers at the TAFE all crashed, so I couldn't access the system to actually take the exam.  The joys of being totally reliant on modern technology.  I was offered the choice of coming back another day, or going somewhere with free wi-fi and a borrowed laptop and going ahead with the exam on the day. Given I was already two weeks late to sit, I decided against trying again another day and my tutor and I headed of to McDonalds and I took my exam accompanied by the smell of fry oil and pre-schoolers enjoying a trip out with mum and dad.  I can't say it was my easiest exam to get through, but it certainly was the most memorable. I'm sure I'll spend my twilight years regaling my grandchildren with stories of the day grandma took her final exam next to the play equipment at Maccas. Then we will all sit back and laugh at my wild antics as a youngin'.

Now I'm sure you're all thinking I decided to sit back and enjoy all the free time that not being a student affords me. That would be true except for two things. Firstly I never actually studied until the eleventh hour the whole year, so there hasn't actually been an increase in free time for me, and secondly, I have gone completely insane and decided to fill in the non-existent free time by opening up a business.  I am now an independent Kaszazz consultant, which means that I get paid to make scrap book layouts and beautiful cards, and then sell the products that I used to make my art.  It's still early days at the moment, but I've already held one workshop which was open to general public, and started regular private workshops for a select few people (read my big sister and sister in law.)  Once I'm more confident in the stock I'm actually meant to be selling and the skills I need to hold the workshops, I'll start expanding and actually hold more public workshops and hopefully make more sales.  It has been a huge learning experience already, and it can only go up from here. Except for my bank account, that will definitely keep shrinking because I can't help but keep buying every thing I see in the catalog.

I'm still also employed part time at the law firm, and despite it being as depressing as you could imagine spending your days facilitating other people's divorces and custody battles, I am loving being so busy eight hours a day. I start running the minute I get in the door at 8:45 and I don't stop until 5:30 some nights. It's hectic, stressful and some times confronting, but at the end of the day I walk out the door knowing that I've done a good day's work and earned my wage for the day. And the screams and cuddles I get from Miss K when I go to pick her up are always the best part of the day. And all of the worrying I did before I started that she wouldn't adjust, or that it would make life difficult for her were all for nothing. She is of course in the best hands possible being left in the care of mum and Sam, and I usually spend the first five minutes at my sister's house being shown the latest art project they did together, or hearing the new words she learned today. She's always so proud to show off to me, and it's great to see her getting to try things that she'd never get to do with me.

The rest of life with Miss K is pretty peachy too right now.  Of course she's a typical 2 year old, which means she pushes her luck every chance she gets, trying to learn her boundaries and expand them when she can.  We're still learning every day what it means to be a mum and daughter, and our relationship is constantly evolving, and of course I have to do a lot of mean things as her mum, like make sure she eats vegetables on a semi-regular basis, and pick her nose when she has a cold, and enforce rules, even when I don't feel like being the bad cop today, and there are days where it takes a lot of chanting "it's for her own good" to myself to get through another temper tantrum, but we always come out the end of it happy.

I am so proud of the person Miss K is becoming, she is so fearless and she charges through life head first at all times. She loves meeting new people and charms the pants off everyone the moment she speaks to them.  She actually met her Nonno for the first time a month ago, Ady finally having reconciled with his father and they are speaking again for the first time in years. I'd never met his father the whole time we dated, and I wasn't even sure if he was aware when Miss K was born, so we're making up for a lot of lost time at the moment, and in December Miss K and I have been summoned to meet the rest of his family at their annual family reunion. So far Nonno seems to be a doting grandfather, and there are always presents for Miss K whenever we visit, and mysteriously they are always perfectly suited to her. We went down this weekend and there were colouring pencils and Little People figurines waiting in Nonno's kitchen for her.  I have no idea how he knows exactly what to get her, but Miss K certainly always appreciates the gifts and I appreciate the effort and thought.

Things with Ady are going smoothly at the moment, and we've managed to navigate our way through several issues without everything dissolving into screaming matches and name calling lately. I can't say that everything there is perfect, because there are still all the reasons why we never survived as a couple staring us in the face, which does sometimes make it hard to get along, but we're trying to work together for Miss K's sake and so far it's going ok. We're now starting to talk about Miss K staying with her dad by herself, and we're aiming for starting the visits after Miss K turns 3, so I've now given myself something new to stress about. Yay!

Well that's all from me for now, I should probably get to bed too given I need to be up in 7 hours to get ready for work again, the daily grind continues.  I hope to be back again soon, but until then, stay awesome.

It's all over red rover

Well it is now 13 hours since I sat my exam and I am glad to be able to say I survived. At the end of the day, after the countless hours spent studying, taking notes, marking relevant sections and pulling out my hair, not to mention the sleepless nights spent worrying that I wasn't going to be ready, I got into the exam today to find exactly 21 of the most basic questions on payroll I could have asked for all staring me at the face. And the first thing I thought was "what was I so scared of?" I should have known it wouldn't be a difficult day, especially as it was an open book exam, but to find that I could have skipped the majority of the work I have spent the past month doing and spent that time eating ice cream instead was actually a relief. It meant that obviously I had done enough and that everything would be ok.

But I didn't know that this morning as I watched the clock crawl closer and closer to 12, signalling my cue to get in the car and drive to the exam. So I did what any normal person would do and distracted myself with all kinds of useless tasks. What do the rest of you do when getting ready for something important?? Well below is a list of everything I managed to fill my morning with to keep from worrying.

1. Sort my sock drawer (I couldn't find a single pair of clean socks to put on this morning so it was a logical step)
2. Trim my fringe (I actually did this two days ago but I am terrible at cutting hair so I always have to go back and re-trim spots)
3. Play hairdressers with Miss K (I actually got her hair into a really sweet hairstyle and I'm kicking myself that I didn't take photos.)
4. Drink coffee with the 5 visitors we had over the course of the morning (There are days when this place feels like the main meeting place of my family)
5. Play Farmville (of course)
6. Tidy up the lounge room.

Finally about half an hour before I was due to leave I figured I'd better mark some of the pages of my textbooks with sticky notes so that I could find the relevant information without doing that horrible loud flipping of pages you do when you're nervous, and that killed the rest of the time till I had to leave. When I finally got out the door and went to the car Miss K followed me out, and when she realized she was being left behind the look of betrayal on her face was so heart breaking I almost got back out of the car and stayed home. Luckily for me she had both mum and Natty staying with her so the minute my car was out of sight she cheered up and spent the rest of the afternoon playing. And the welcome home I got from her when I finally returned showed that she had well and truly forgiven me for abandoning her yet again.

I won't bore you with the details of the actual exam, because really there is no way even I can make an exam on payroll sound exciting, and really the most memorable part of the whole experience was the gentleman sitting right next to me who spent the whole time talking to himself. But I do know already that I got two of the questions wrong, but I also know that I'm not the only one who answered them incorrectly so I don't feel so bad. I don't know when I'll get the rest of my results, but the next time I will hear from the TAFE is in the middle of next month when I am invited to re-enroll for the rest of my subjects. But until then I am thankfully on holidays, and gearing up to start a few new projects, as well as finish a few old ones that I have been putting off for way too long now. Stay tuned to hear more shortly, as my first big project will hopefully be a Christmas organizing binder, so I'll be sharing that with you guys soon.

Well given that it is now 3:00 in the morning I should probably go to bed, I will admit I did sneak a nap in this evening once Miss K was in bed so I'm not really very tired, but given that she will probably be up again in about 4 hours I should try to get some extra sleep while I can. Stay awesome my wonderful readers and I'll be back again soon with some awesome new projects for you to admire, and even try if you're brave enough.

Let the countdown begin...

So I currently have 15 hours to go before my big exam. I thought I would be more frantic or terrified right now, but I am surprisingly calm. And what's more I have been calm all day. I actually had a lovely day today. I spent the morning dodging revision shopping with mum and Miss K, and this afternoon after Miss K's nap we avoided doing homework went and visited one of my oldest friends, who coincidentally is also an ex boyfriend of mine. It was a very relaxed afternoon, if you ignore the amount of times I had to jump out of my seat to rescue various electrical appliances or musical instruments from Miss K's grubby fingers (my friend has a collection of guitars that I am quite envious of.) And once Miss K was fed and bathed and tucked up in bed I went and laid on my bed and fell asleep did some crossword puzzles.

I guess my reasoning behind not panicking right now and spending my last few hours re-reading all of my text books is probably the fact that this is in fact an open book exam, so even if I walk in not 100% sure of an answer I'll be able to look it up in a jiffy. Which kind of defeats the purpose of an exam if you ask me. But I'm not about to protest this by refusing to bring my books and calculator into the exam, I'm not a complete idiot you know.

I think the thing I am looking forward to the most once the semester is finished is being able to spend more time with Miss K without feeling guilty that I am neglecting my studies while playing with her. Even after spending the past 6 months juggling full time parenting with part time study I haven't managed to find the balance between the two, and something is always being left to the last minute. I have a horrible feeling that next years studies will require even more effort because we will start covering serious subjects like GST, which already does my head in. So it will take a lot of careful planning to make sure nothing and no one gets left behind.

But the next time you see me I will officially be on holidays, even though it doesn't really count around here, but I'm thinking of holding my own version of schoolies in my back yard. Now all I need to do is find a group of teenagers willing to get drunk and make total fools of themselves for my own entertainment. If any of you know someone, do let me know.

Well that's all from me for now, I really should get to bed if I expect to be coherent enough tomorrow afternoon to be able to put pen to paper. Wish me luck my lovely readers and I'll be back and ready to party soon.