Daylight savings - Save me!

Daylight Savings ended last night.. a whole extra hour to stay snuggled in bed snoozing. Bliss!

Except that The Man I Married missed the teenage lesson on how to sleep in, so at 6.30am - which today became 5.30am , he woke up and decided to get up. 

Woke the dogs up and had a loud chat with them, banged around in the kitchen, turned on the TV and flicked channels.
Grrrrrrr.

GRRRRRR!

I don't know about you, but once I'm awake and disturbed I can't go back to sleep so there we both were, awake, nursing cups of coffee at 5.30am. 

I retreated into Computer land, mostly because I wasn't sure I could speak in pleasant sentences to the overgrown two year bouncing around on the couch.

I understand you are possibly sick of me raving about my refound designing mojo, but once you get something back that you loved, it's hard to squish that kind of Happy down. 
So here's what I made yesterday afternoon, and what you can feel free to download.

How cute is that ? This makes up into a little Easter Bunny Treasure box about 6.5cm high, perfect for a few Cadbury Eggs as a sweet little gift for someone.

You can grab the PDF to print it out HERE 

Don't just click and save this little picture as you box will be too tiny :-)

You basically cut around the outside edge, score all the solid lines with the back of a butter knife and a ruler and fold into the box shape, adding a lick of glue along the tab line to hold it together.

The bottom interweaves which gives it a little extra strength, and you can secure it with a bit of tape if you are loading the box with heavier items.

This mornings ridiculously EARLY start gave me time and head space to play a little more, so I made a second box... just in case you aren't into bunnies - although I don't even know how that is possible because :

Back to Box Making :

So this morning I made this:

Same deal, different pictures, a little brighter and funkier...

You can grab the PDF to print it out HERE

In case you can't tell, I'm having alot of fun!

What time did your little or big treasures get out of bed this morning?

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Snakes alive

Do You know what is really not fun?
A panic attack while you are driving.
All kinds of not fun.

Heart racing, adrenaline pumping,  rapid breathing, shaking hands, crying and cold sweats.
Because I ran over the biggest brown snake in Australia.
I am scared of snakes. 
Terrified of them.
Poisonous ones. Surprise ones.
I think we can safely call it phobia.

I hate walking past long grass, I hate messy overgrown gardens.
I do anything I can to convince my kids to not leave the safety of concrete footpaths anytime between the months of September and April. (yes I'm aware snakes can go on concrete but at least you have a fighting chance of seeing them).
I feel sick when I'm surprised by a picture of a snake, and have actually cried when they surprise someone on TV. 
I really dislike the letter "S".

So yesterday I dropped Miss 15 at her friends house in a nearby town and I was cruising home along the highway, singing at the top of my lungs to Tim McGraw when all of a sudden wriggling and coiling on the road in front of me was an enormous brown snake. 
I screamed like a little girl.
I didn't have any time to react really and I had to run over it. 
OMG

Thump thump. 

I was frantically looking in my headlights for signs of it on the road behind me. What if it flicked up and was under the car?
 I could see it in the rear view still wriggling and I struggled to hold myself together.
The only thing stopping me from pulling over and vomiting was the fact that there are more snakes waiting in the grass whereever I pulled over.

I know my reaction is unreasonable but then that is the very nature of a phobia. 

I wanted to call my daughter who I had just left and forbid her from going for any walks or out into the garden.
I was scared that the snake I just ran over was pregnant and that little baby snakes were now crawling around in the underside of my car. 
Every long stringy strip of bark from the ghost gums looked like more snakes and pretty soon I was driving along in my very own self contained Looney Bin.

If you have a small python and you can tell me that you have it and that it is not poisonous, I don't have a problem. I can even touch it... I won't enjoy it but I don't feel scared.
But the unknown snakes. The surprises, coupled with the fact that we lived in Snake Central Victoria where deadly King Browns and Tiger snakes are plentiful, are enough to make me want to pack up my family and move to the antarctic.

I made it home, after a long 40 minute drive, me talking myself around and around, knowing I'm being irrational and yet being completely trapped within my own cycle of fear and feeding the fear.

Hubby has gone to collect Miss 15 from her friends house just a few minutes ago. 
I told him to watch out for snakes.
He laughed. He doesn't get it.

I know that accompanying this story I should have a picture of a fierce angry snake but there is NO.WAY. IN. HELL. I am googling for that image so here is an adorable hedgehog baby. Because they don't jump out of the bushes and kill you.

image credit

Do you have an irrational fear?  How do you deal with it?

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The end of the Buttons

In a previous life I was a crafty designer, designing and handpainting over 600 button designs for crafting - quilting, stitching and scrapbooking. I adored it, and it gave me a little bit of pin money while I stayed at home with my littlest girl.

I have a huge laser machine ( and may or may not be responsible for sending Fiona from Imogen's Angels into a Laser Love Affair) . I taught myself a complicated Art Program and had the very best fun making all sorts of crazy and wonderful things.

I have designed everything from cats and dogs, snails and frogs, to castles, angels, quilt barns and daisies. 

Over the past few weeks I have come to the end of my crafty designing road. My laser machine has cut it's last button.

I am eager for button free cupboards, for less mess, for space.

As I clear out the boxes ( adding the buttons to my website) I struggle to remember making them all, but there are soooo many. They are oozing out of the top of the wardrobes, and from under the beds. My linen cupboard has no linen in it, just patterns and boxes full of buttons and plastic bags. 

As with all things the desire to hang on because it's safe, and because it has, at one time, defined me, is strong, and yet I am quietly confident that this is the right choice, and the right time. 

If you are a crafter of any sort pop on over to www.buttonbliss.com and have a little look. 

New Adventures are waiting, not to mention some precious cupboard space xxx

Weekend Writers Linkup is open. It you blog this weekend, please add your link. ...  xx

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Panic

Wide awake at 2 am.

Heart pounding

Pounding

Pounding

Pounding




Wide awake. Fearful and yet not really able to pin-point the fear.

Afraid of what?

Fearful of ???

My heart is flying, bouncing.
I can feel every 'whoosh' of my blood as it thunders through my veins.

I am anxious. Unsettled.
I am frightened. My mouth dry, my hands clammy.
It's two am and I am absolutely terrified of ....
Nothing.
Everything.

I hate these rude wake up calls.

These uninvited interruptions to my slumber.

I hate the searching through my mind, the arguments with myself.

I hate wondering where this came from and what it means.
I hate trying to calm myself, to talk sense to myself.

I hate the moment when I realise once again that this is a random, unfounded physical reaction to a surge in Fight Or Flight Adrenaline.

That there is nothing to fear,

Because my heart is still pounding. And I remain hyper alert.

At 2 am.

Weekend Writers Linkup is open. It you blog this weekend, please add your link. ... anything goes xx

Please add your weekend post to the linky below, if you blogged Saturday and Sunday you can add each post separately.

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Show me your freckle

A chocolate freckle the size of a bread and butter plate.

Oh Yeah!!!

We went on a little adventure today to the Corowa Chocolate Factory, a cute little 'factory' nestled within the bowels of the old Flour Mills in Corowa.

There was lots of chocolate on display and for sale, the smell was heavenly and we bought up...

Confusingly, almost all the chocolate for sale is from the Junee Chocolate Factory, and not from Corowa at all.

 - some investigation via Google tells me they have the same business owners.. but I kinda think if I go to a factory, I'm expecting to buy produce from that factory, not the one 600 km away, or at least that it is obvious that what you are buying is not their own product. We didn't know what we bought was not produced in Corowa until we got in our car to drive away.

The main event for the day was Miss 9 making her own Chocolate freckle.
A thick disc of gorgeous silky Belgium chocolate is poured onto a plate and then the kids can got crazy topping them with sprinkles and coconut. It is then set in the fridge for 15 minutes and kiddo can take it home.

 

 

 

 

 

Do you see how big that is ?? As big as her head! All that chocolate for just $5 , that is good value!

 

There is a lovely coffee shop available and we scored a table right next to the heater, I could have easily sat there all day and watched people come and go, sipping my Chai Latte and pretending there was no housework waiting for me at home.

 



Where do you love to go, for an escape from your reality?

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How To IVF

I'm suspended 2 metres above the ground between cold metal stirrups and a blue vinyl seat. The paper sheet across my legs hides nothing as his head pops up into view.
The headlight on his forehead is bright as he asks me "Do you play Golf?"
Ummmm, No!
 
His head disappears between my thighs and I start my meditative chant again.
 

 
"You are not here. This is not happening. This is a tropical beach paradise. You are lying on a beach Lisa. Breathe Lisa Breathe. "
 
There is prodding and poking. The room smiles and several heads nod as the 'right place' is chosen.
 
 
 
IVF is not for the faint-hearted and it certainly is not for those without their sense of humour.
Amongst the driving desperate yearning for a baby comes moments of sheer absurd hilarity.
 
Our Miss 9 is an IVF blessing.
 
I had my tubes cut, burnt and tied at the ripe old age of 25, thinking I would not want any more children. I was wrong.
For the next five years I cried whenever I passed through the baby aisles in Target or Kmart. I craved a baby, even as I watched my other children grow.
The Man I Married resisted and hedged but eventually agreed to follow the IVF route to have our sweet girl.
 
IVF is a weird hormone driven beast that can take you from high to low in a heartbeat.
 
First of all there are appointments and blood tests, counselling and assessments to decide if you are a suitable candidate.
In our case, the swimmers were swimming, the eggs were hatching and for some reason they decided we were sane enough to parent another child.
 
Next came sprays up my nose to make my schedule match the schedule of the doctors clinic. Everything needs to happen Monday to Friday between the hours of 8 and 5 and they make that happen with a nose spray.

 
It was time for injections in the belly.
At this point many readers might wince but I've had worse mosquito bites and the endlessly dangling carrot of a baby just makes it not so bad. It's not fun, but not bad.
 
 
I remember one night when I'd gone to the celebration dinner of a friends Yr 10 hospitality class.
I ate, I clapped but always on my mind was the deadline - 9 pm = needle time.
There I was in a high-school toilet cubicle, having just injected my daily dose of hormones, when I dropped the syringe.
 

 
 
In slow motion, I watched it drop and roll out into the main bathroom area, where it came to rest against a beautiful 5 inch cream suede heel.
"Oh, for god sake" I heard the owner of the shoe mutter, and she turned on her gorgeous heels and marched out.
Emerging from my cubicle I picked my syringe up and felt strangely guilty for absolutely no reason at all. 
I didn't re-enter the dining room. I went home with a big bag of chips and climbed into my comfy PJ's. I didn't want to know who owned the cream shoes. I just wanted a baby.
 
My ovaries did what they are supposed to do for IVF and instead of producing the usual one follicle for the month they produced 15. Yay!

You know that full, off-colour feeling you get a few days before a period? Multiply that feeling by 1000 and that is what it feels like to have 15 + follicles swelling in your ovary. Jeans didn't do up, elastic pants felt too tight, for a while I considered wearing a Muumuu.
The idea of a baby made it okay
 
Every couple of days I would drive 80 km to the clinic where a nurse would stick an ultrasound wand up my Hoo-hah to count and measure the diameter of the follicles. This was great social event every time with random nurses popping in throughout the exam to discuss progress, the weather and the perfect way to poach an egg while I laid back and smiled.

 
Two days before the determined collection date I was instructed to give myself Trigger injections to tell my ovaries it was time to Set Them Free.
On Collection day we arrived at the clinic and I changed into another paper gown, while hubby wandered down the hall and tried to pretend he wasn't about to have an intimate relationship with a paper cup. I went to sleep and woke up feeling as though a small alien space ship may or may not have run me over.
 

 
Then came what we like to refer to as The Long Wait.
 
The 3 days when you wait to see if anything, anyone, fertilised.
Do you remember, back when you were a kid, on the night before Christmas. You were waiting, on the brink of something good, but the anticipation and the underlying fear of complete disappointment was enough to have you bouncing around like a cat on Crack. It feels like that. But worse.
 

 
 
We were lucky enough to have 7 fertilised eggs, and so the time was scheduled for a transfer.
 
Which brings me back to my opening , legs in the air,  a mining helmet and me trying to think of witty comments about golf while the Doctor held in his hand the most precious little bundle of cells I have ever known.
I would have laughed at anything at that moment, paid for 100 lessons with Greg Norman. I would have agreed to a Saturday morning 6am Golf game every week for the next 50 years if only good Karma and luck could tell me this little bundle of cells were going to stay put. Guided by ultrasound, the good Doc selects the best place in the uterus to place the bundle and oh-so-gently, releases it into the world.
 
The bundle of cells transferred, I was sent away and told to carry on with normal life ( which I took to mean go immediately to bed and don't move unless the house is on fire).
 
This led to my "Addiction to testing". Those readers who have been in a similar situation may know what I mean. 
I became hyper-aware of the pregnancy tests in the toiletry aisle of the supermarket. I could spend an hour reading them all, and deciding which one was the most reliable. Which one could give the earliest prediction of success or failure. I knew them by size, colour, days before period, lines or dots or +'s.
I must have bought every Clear-Blue, Pregnosis, Crystal Clear and 1st Response pregnancy test within a 15 km radius of our home.

 
 
I peed on every stick, analysed the varied shades of white, almost white, off white and "if I put my head on the side and screw my eyes up I can almost imagine a second pink line" white.
  
Even now, passing the tests in the supermarket is a sombre moment as we carefully nod to each other and avert our eyes.
 
The first transfer result was amazingly positive but I knew almost from the start that something didn't feel right. At 9 weeks we returned to the IVF clinic for a scan where they told us that there was no heartbeat. The little bundle of cells had implanted and tried very hard to grow but for some reason it just couldn't keep developing. We were so very sad, heartbroken and generally ripped-off. I probably could have dealt with a no-pregnancy result , but to get a positive result only to have that squashed was hard. Of course my body doesn't do things easily so I ended up having a curette.. some drama.. another curette... drama....
 
A few months later after A LOT OF DRAMA that is far too complicated to explain, I found myself back on that blue vinyl chair, two metres above the ground. Two little embryos had been thawed and one of them had successfully defrosted. Doc still had his headlight on and once again we were discussing Golf. I zoned out. I breathed.

This one stayed!
Even now, nine years later, I sometimes look at her in amazement and say "You were frozen. How can that be?"

The best Icypole ever -

I know we were ridiculously lucky, that we are blessed beyond measure. I don't take any of this for granted. I promise.
We donated our remaining embryos to a couple, but sadly they did not result in a positive pregnancy. I feel so sad for that couple and yet I know we tried.
Many readers also know I donated eggs, a couple of years after our darling girl was born, to a couple who had no hope without donated eggs. You can read about their story here. (It ends very happily :-)

For those who have questions, I am an open book, ask away. If you are considering donating eggs, or wondering how your body will cope, all I can say is the horror stories in the movies are not always a true reflection of how it will be. IVF is not on my top 10 list of fun things to do, but it certainly isn't on my worst either. xxx



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Please add your weekend post to the linky below, if you blogged Saturday and Sunday you can add each post separately.

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Mummies can work too .... Weekend Writer

"But Mummy, when you go to work I don't feel right. I miss you"

The words from my daughter today, as I accepted a night shift from my nursing co-ordinator.

Mid last year I finally got my Nursing Qualifications. It took 40 years, 4 kids, many hours of study and a few false starts but finally, I had the beginnings of a career.

Since September ( when my registration was recognised) I have worked mornings, afternoons and night shifts. More and more I am becoming a night shifter.
The hours suit me - I can leave for work after my littlest goes to bed and I am home before she pours the milk on her Cornflakes.
I sleep when the kids are at school.
The challenge of night shift appeals to me, with a bigger patient load and less "on-the-ground" support. The learning curve is steep but the satisfaction of a well completed evening is enormous.

So what's with the guilt trip being laid on me? Miss 9 has happily accepted that Dad goes to work 5 days a week, for a few years Dad would leave on Sunday night and not re-appear until Friday night.

I am feeling torn. Again.

Image Credit

I want to grow, to develop a career. I like the interaction and frankly, it's nice to finally be able to take some of the financial burden that The Man I Married has carried for so long. It's nice to see a payment in our account and know I put it there.

But the (guilt) MOTHER in me is whispering in my ear, guilt tripping, and the small child in front of me, telling me that she doesn't want me to go breaks my heart.

It's so hard to ignore the negative voices.

I know she is safe. Looked after and loved.
I know this is just because for so long I was here, always, and she is struggling with the new regime.
I know she will be fine if I go to work.
I know every hour or so, her words will jump back into my mind and I will wrestle the guilt back down into a manageable lump.

Counting the hours until I am home, and my small one feels all is okay once again.



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Add your weekend post to the linky below .

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Weekend Writers Linkup --- In the beginning

While there are many dedicated daily bloggers out there, there are also many who just blog when they get a chance, and often that chance comes on the weekend.

This is a new link-up, it will run every weekend... and the rules are pretty simple.

Love the Linker! - Comment on the hosts post ---(I love how that sounds - "Host posts"...) - A little loving goes a long way, and with some support, I will do my best to continue this link-up and showcase some of the best Weekend Writing we bloggers have to offer. Follow Button Brain in the social world somewhere - on Facebook , Twitter or follow this blog.... Thankyou!!!

Add the Weekend Writer Button somewhere on your blog, either on the sidebar (I have a Grab the Code option) , or add a link to Button Brain and the Weekend Writers image within your post - feel free to right click and copy the images available.

 Link your previously unpublished weekend post via the Linky tool .. this is any post you wrote and published over the weekend, there are no rules on topics ( as long as it isn't illegal) . If you blog Saturday and Sunday you are welcome to link both.

Show your love to other linkees - we can be a great support and source of friendship in blogland, spend a little time reading other peoples posts.. you never know, you might find a kindred spirit or a fellow lunatic.

Please be honest and only link a fresh unpublished post ... don't link old posts or send your sales pitch every weekend... show us your blog !

Join me this weekend and add your link to the Weekend Writer Link-up.