aka R’acquel

Things have been going well with my workroom eversince i began tackle it tuesday late september this year - my workdesk was the first thing that i addressed. Since that tackle, i have begun to understand that a cluttered workdesk is a sign of procrastination & having too much going on in my life. If i start forming paper piles on my desk, you can bet that the most painful & procrastinated things are living burried right at the bottom of it.

The good news is that i haven’t allowed my desk to get too bad for quite some time. Life has it’s natural moments of “to do” things building up. My workdesk was beginning to feel a little overwhelming, so i chose to address the room again this week. Here’s the before shot:

I was very embarassed about putting a stack of things on top of my monitor to address later, but all up - things have still be going really well, i’ve been feeling increasingly better about it across the weeks. Here is the after shot:

It doesn’t look like a big difference, but the psychological impact has been fantastic for me. I went through my piles - looking forward to discovering what procratinated things might be living underneath it. It was surprisingly easy for me - in general, most of the stuff were things that needed to be filed - a very clean easy process.

The hardest bit was giving my desk a thourough wiping - finding myself regretting that i had bought this “Zed” Table, because there’s so much glass, which means wiping not only the top surface but underneath it all too - which has spaces that are hard to get into. Glass is difficult to clean & “polish” - and i’d welcome any tips if anyones got the knack for getting that squeaky clean finish all the time. I know newspaper can work well, though with the hard-to-reach spaces, you just have to make-do with imperfections (and it’s still gonna get all dusty with time anyway!) So, i did the best by rubbing with a lint-free cloth after the wet-wiping.

I regret buying the table - thinking “wood! wood!” so much easier to clean. The other problem with all this glass is moving house. We were lucky to have our move here sponsored by my husband’s work colleague, meaning professional movers with insurance - but i don’t look forward to moving this piece of furniture to the next house we have to find soon.

I spotted Karen’s Feng Shui site from Jessica Duquette’s blog the night before. Enhancing interior space & decluttering is one of my hobbies, so i took it on in my workroom.

The Fame & Reputation

The logic behind it makes perfect sense to me - the first thing which will catch your eye living in this space as soon as you walk in. A good idea to put something that i’m proud to associate myself with here.

I need more respect for my work, especially the unpaid work i’ve been doing for my husband. What surprised me about this was that i had already moved my “no-limits” sign a week ago - and my mind has been thinking about the uneasiness i’ve been experiencing about my “unpaid” working situation. After much thought on the matter, I had to make some changes to my sign;

My former attitude is not making any money - there has to be a limit somwhere right?! Yeah, this is what my life needs to aspire towards now - the “show me the bloody fucking money” way of life! A great symbolic reminder to myself :D The strangest irony of it all? This sign used to live underneath my monitor and i barely noticed it as much as i do now that it’s resting in the formal fame & reputation corner! I think it’s working and i look forward to seeing what happens in the next few weeks! :D

Career

I want business to pick-up, i want to make more money and i want direction in knowing with what i want to do in my life career-wise. A water symbol was suggested, so a plant was going to be ideal for me. I was thinking of my Bonsai Fig, coz i use that plant to reflect on the ‘direction’ of my life. It would have been perfect, but I was uneasy about a this sun-loving plant being indoors without access to strong light. That’s when the light bulb moment hit me - my plant Moses! It’s an indoor plant very sensitive to light! Yay!

This is bound to put a smile on my dear friend, Rambling Rose - who gave Moses to me about 8 months ago because she is STILL alive. 555. It made me feel so much better as soon as i brought her into my room. My bonsai fig is situated in the same “career” zone on my verandah, so it dawned on me that this plant was likely to stand for “Newtown Mums“, while my fig steps in for ”my general life”. 

After some further review, i got my 30th birthday card sent from NM this month. I later realised that there are 6 names on the card, this plant has 6 prominent stems, with a small 7th one beginning to sprout. Who knows, maybe it’s the new member we’ll be hearing from soon…

I also have my small “saving time” book there, to remind me that i will never spend another 30hrs of not sleeping in an attempt to deal with sunshine hating idiots ever again. There’s also the “Feel the Fear & Do It Anyway” by Susan Jeffers that’s been responsible for great changes to my life recently too

Skills & Knowledge

My violin naturally fell here. It’s perfect for the task of meditating to gain more wisdom. I learn a lot of things outside of music as i practise

 

Prosperity

A reminder of what i have in abundance. Ironically the space of my “emotional shelf” that i’ve recently converted into a money-making space - so that was a very nice moment of serendipity!

Here rests my unfinished painting of Frieda Kahlo taking on Nad’s Hair Removal Gel. Ironically, i need to save $$$ to get my teeth fixed with orthodontal work, so it’s a great picture to have here as i can see all of her teeth! I also have a bowl of spare change (there’s always spare change, even during the hard times) - along with one of those Chinese good luck boat things my mother gave me that’s supposed to help make money multiply when you let it sit with money.  

After further thought - i realised where to put my recently acquired bottle of cognac given to me for my 30th by the NM Gals. I’ve had this dream of buying a bottle no less that $1K, to celebrate a fantastic achievement with a huge party one day (i’m sensing this could be in 2 years time). For the meanwhile, i’m not going to open this particular bottle until the time is right - so it’s currently “appreciating” in value! (Here’s hoping that age will make it taste much better once it does get opened! :D)   

Helpful People

Oh - a powerful spot hitting me very hard at the moment. If i don’t do things, it won’t get done. Everything $$$ we get has been a big struggle the last few months. We have to move house. It’s supposed to be good to have angels present here - and i had the perfect token for it.

 

An angel playing a violin - it’s a piece from a charm given to me by a psychic friend of my mothers, who’s also a Feng Shui consultant. At the time of receiving it - it didn’t have much meaning to me until i got my violin. The poignancy of the symbol had amplified for me, and i knew there was something intense about it. I’ve had moments in life where it’s felt like this has been a token of someone looking out for me.

I’ve been very active in trying to find another place to move. The situation is bad in this region but i think the phenomena is nation wide with rising interest rates. Many people wanting to sell their houses, not many who want to invest - so there’s not much rental houses available on the market. What makes matters more stressful is that the owner of the house were in is selling the place - so if someone buys, we’d need to ship out in 60days. We don’t want to be forced into the neighbouring suburb, so it’s been important to keep the search effort up.

I’ve had my moments of complacency with the search, allowing a week to go by without popping into the agents here - however as the market is so slow, it makes my current pace with it seem over the top - providing either “none” or maybe 1-2 houses with some places that are still not up to providing for our needs.

I like how the angel sits above the exit of my door - it’s a good reminder to me that it’s important to keep looking. The owner is selling $50K above one real estate agent’s evaluation - so we have that as an advantage in our favour amidst the current market environment finding it very hard to sell property. Many houses have been listed for months & months with no bites.  

The really weird thing about it today, when my husband’s car got pranged by the old lady at the supermarket car park today - how the moment felt like a good omen to me. I only manged to read this again hours later, as this space is also good for;

“When you are in entanglements, you need to be treated fairly.”

I wonder if this is why my mind thought of this angel when it felt like someone was looking out for us at the time.

I have the feeling that we are likely to find another nice house that is going to be even better value & quality than this one. Only time can tell. In the meanwhile, i can’t afford to be complacent with it. It’s good to get reminded each time i walk out the door

Family

I am estranged from my own side of the family even though i get along well with them now. I’ll write more about this on thoughts about what “Merry Christmas” means to me.

This is the most poignant change in my room. I can’t believe how deeply it has impacted me. It’s a photograph of my grandfather (My Dad’s father). I’ve never met him as he’s been dead for as long as i’ve been alive. As my brithday was so miserable this year (which is why i treasure the bottle of cognac so dearly now) - i raised a virtual toast to my grandfather to celebrate his 30 years of death.

I’ve felt his presence with me ever since i saw this photo. Maybe it’s because his face has strong resemblance, but i just got the impression that had he been in my life, along with my other grandparents & extended family - things would’ve most certainly been very different for me.

This space is supposed to be good if you wanted to be treated as a part of the family, even though you’re not blood related. Good to put up family photos & pictures of ancerstors. 

All up - i’m surprised by how amazing my work room feels at the moment. It’s well organised. There are two corners that will need further review - but at the moment, the energy is really zinging in here!

We had a dingle to our car today. We were on our way to a Christmas party, stopped off at the supermarket to buy some fruit to eat. My husband was returning to the car, opens the back right door to put the groceries in - my eyes saw my husband opening the door, so i glanced back to the front. Quite a few seconds later, i hear this long crunching sound! I turn back to see that this old woman has just driven the corner of her car into our door!

Here’s a rough illustration to show you the situation;

She was trying to get into the single carspace to the side of our car. The car bumped my husband’s right thigh, and then the corner of her car got stabbed by the open door. Crrrrrunch. Holly fucking batshit batman.

I’m just glad my husband’s ok - he has a small bruise on his knee, the leg is feeling a little sore but no damage to the integrals.

The exchange of details wasn’t nasty, though the old woman was not acknowledging responsibility for the damage and was very minimising with her use of language about the situation. Said that my husband opened the door too fast. My husband’s at fault for opening to door too suddenly in a car park? Even when the car bumped his body first?

I can understand how you can be at fault for doing that on a busy highway but i can’t understand how this can be the case when you’re returning to your car in a car park. I believe the door opened ‘too fast’ for her coz she didn’t bloody see my husband there at all. Yeah, “whatever” - you just move forward. 

Despite knowning that this incident was going to make us very late to the party, it actually felt like a really good omen! It’s weird, something like this would be considered negative/sadenning but as it happened, i had this strange sudden feeling that it was a ’sign’, a good one, as though someone watching over us was saying,

“Hey - this is a sign of really good luck here!” ..beyond the fact that my husband scathed through without serious injury. I wasn’t feeling the slightest bit put down by it - even though it was a little upsetting, it seemed like one of those meant-to-be things which somehow - was in our favour!

So we had to drive back home to notify the insurance agency. As we drove into the driveway, i saw this flash of red. OMG - the mysterious plant that has been sprouting out of my pots on the verandah has made a beautiful splash of red! I didn’t know what it could possibly be!

It wasn’t until after the party that i could check the flower out because i had forgotten all about it. My husband was downstairs, fixing part of the the door that was sticking out (well after taking it into the smash-repair place where they took photos for an assessment). I was downstairs with him, my eyes got caught by that flash of red again.

“Oh my God! I forgot about the flower! I’m gonna have to check what it is!”

My husband comes up with me, coz he’s just as curious. I peer over and i can’t believe it, it’s a snap dragon!

The joy i felt, my heart leaping at the colour - a plant i had sowed without believing that it could ever reach flowering. It’s the second snap dragon this year. It lifted my husband’s spirits too. More buds have formed, there will be more arriving soon! Yay

I’ve had a recurring dream of seeing plants sprouting out of my front yard, surprising me like this. The first dream was spinach, and the second was that my front yard was sprouting armaryllis flowers everywhere. I couldn’t work out what the dream meant - beyond omens of unexpected surprises just begining to leap out all over the place unepectedly.

What occurred to me today was that the phenomena of my “good omen” dream is currently happening in my front yard just like this. I planted succulents everywhere, so there’s now all these gorgeous “fire” flowers popping out, exactly like the dream;

This is one of my most favourite flowers of all and this type of succulent was one of the very first plants that triggered my love-affair for gardening to become a serious (and yet somewhat comfortably casual) hobby a few years ago Maybe it’s because i’m a fire spirit - the colour always knocks me over with deep pleasure & comfort.

I had noticed this other succulent flowering at my parents place, so i wondered over to them - and to my surprise, they had begun to flower here too.

I don’t think much of this flower, but it did make a very interesting photo to look at and i especially love the geometry which lives in it too.

So yeah - the day had it’s pitfall but i am wondering if something really good is lurking around the corner for us. It feels like there could be something on the way, but even if there isn’t - there’s been enough joy to enjoy today ;) 

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Dear Mrs.Lifecruiser,

My sincere apologies for arriving to your crack me up party so fashionably late…

I make these offerings:

A joke which which my son invented on Friday, inspired by Pop Cap’s Bookworm game: 

Q. Why did the bookworm eat all of the mail?

A. Beause he likes eating letters!

…and now for something more “tongue in cheek!”

There was once a blind man, in search of a wife, who gave instructions to his mother that he liked his women round and very plump.

He sleeps with the first woman.

“Not fat enough mum! I want a bigger one!”

He sleeps with the second woman.

“That was better, but i want a bigger one!”

The poor mother has difficulty in finding another plump woman, so she asks the third one to sleep upside down with her bottom in his face so it can give her son the impression that he’s with a really fat woman.

The next morning, the blind man’s mother asks him how she was.

“Thank you so much mum! She’s absolutely perfect …but it’s a pity about the bad breath!”

It’s a good thing that she wasn’t voted as the Best “Diarreahist” huh?!

Tongue-In-Cheekishly Yours,

aka R’acquel

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Busy mum have i been! Bursting through the procrastinative shakles to slaughter a whale of an ecommerce project today. No brainspace to cook, so fish’n'chips it is tonight.

Day 3 of our challenge to get our son to the dinner table in reasonable time/manner. No qualms, no complaints, no grunting - straight to the table & time to chow down!

Perhaps this was influenced by what was on the menu tonight, perhaps this is progress. Only time can tell. Nice to have things very easy tonight so for now, i must depart and dive back into ecommerce for Oz Whistles.

 

Oz Whistles’ Celebrity Stick steps in for a photoshoot on my work desk.

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Day 2 of our trial run with getting our son to sit down to the dinner table in a reasonable time/manner.

A dutiful walk downstairs to announce that dinner is ready to my family. We have pasta with a garlic infused yoghurt sauce, paired with buttered paprika on the menu tonight. Husband dutifully walks upstairs to the dining room table. I call out to my son another two times from upstairs (it’s got his attention now). My husband & i proceed to press on with dinner, acting very casual - assuming the belief that our son has turned invisible again.

We hear our son climb up the stairs and he heads straight for the table (no running-away games to delay the action of getting to the table, things are looking pretty good ). On his way to sit down on the chair, he engages in his ritual holler of,

“I need to sit on my elephant chair & eat!” It’s something he usually says as he is close to sitting down on the chair.

[The “elephant chair” is a piece of foam we use as a booster seat, an off cut from the sofa we made in 2001. It was a rectangular piece of foam with a long skinny piece hanging off one corner. I turned it into an elephant many moons ago. Even though it’s nose is no longer present, it is still known as “the elephant” in our household ;)]

My son expressed a few guttural gruntings after his famous “elephant chair” line. (not eating yet, but very close!) My husband & I proceeded with very pleasant dialogue along the lines of looking forward to when Aidan would arrive, even though he was sitting there right in front of us. 

Aidan grunts a little bit more, making sounds of frustration but they’re forced, “performed”, not to the extent & length of last night. We’re no longer frustrated parents, things are very relaxed & easy going for us. Negative attention has been pulled completely out of the loop. Part of his grunts contain a subtle inflexion of,

“I’m gonna try to grunt a little bit more like this to elicit familiarity, this is not how things are supposed to work.” Nothing dramatic.

We soon see him re-appear again after the first forkfull of dinner enters into his mouth :D

All up, he’s down to the table in perhaps less than a minute tonight and dinner’s tasting pretty good to him. He does a fine job, expresses a happy & mighty,

“I’m all full now!”

A great run, the best in a long time. We’ve spent perhaps 6 weeks trying to nut this one out. Perhaps the phase is naturally running itself out but i think taking the negative reaction out of the equation has been a possible key. Being patient & nice before all of that didn’t work either. It looks like “invisible” has been an intriguing alternative method of giving our son attention whilst removing another form of it at the same time.  

It’s felt a lot like stepping right out of the diegesis of a film or book, a little resonant to The Truman Show and it also reminds me of playing that school game with elastics,

“England Ireland Scotland Whales, Inside Outside, Inside Out” 

Yeah, it’s got that quality of inside-outside stuff, a bit like that creature in The Yellow Submarine which eats it’s own tail and turns itself inside-out. An intriguing involution of some sort.

I’ll keep that as a trail of thought to follow up later. We can only take things a step at a time. 

Looking forward to tomorrow

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It was raining. I had taken my son out to a local cafe. We were making our way home and spotted a snal traversing on the footpath. My son has never seen a snail up-front in this fashion, with it’s antanae sticking out.

“Look Aidan! A snail! Touch it’s eyes and see what happens!”

My son poked it, the snail retracted - it made him laugh. Then i did the unimaginable - decided to bring him home as a “pet”, but snails give me the creeps. It was really ewie to pull him off the foothpath and pop him into the shopping bag. To make matters worse, the snail starts pooing in the shopping bag on our way home too.

It felt really terrible to rip him away from his usual environs. It was as though i was ripping an endagered speicies out of an amazon forrest (how bizzare, it’s a snail for crying out loud!). My son had a great time with “George”. He was released back into the wild after spending two nights in our home.

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It’s been a thematic phase that our son has been going through - the challenge of getting him to the dinner table without protest. Yesterday, my husband & I dared to try something incredibly different to the usual routine;

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