Disco Knitter

…when I realised that I had forgotten to check UAC for mid round offers, which were released today.

I’ve been offered a place in a Bachelor of Science at Macquarie.

Now I just have to decide if I’ll take it. Which probably sounds bizarre given the amount of stress I have been vibrating with over this issue.

I suppose the disappointment, and the waiting has taken its toll, and I am realising that Macquarie is a great big faceless institution, and UNE is a lot more student friendly. I’ll be swapping support for access. There are a lot of factors to weigh up – but at least now I have a CHOICE.

And in Squishy news, he came home last night declaring an unwillingness to go back to preschool today. So we talked a lot, and took it easy this morning. It turns out that he’s a bit overwhelmed with the busyness and noise of preschool. He’s only ever been with a maximum of four other kids at daycare, so it’s a big adjustment. And one of the kids said something mean to another kid, then Squish thought they were talking about him (he wasn’t), and he found the whole thing very upsetting.

We talked about how interpersonal relationships are hard, even for grown ups, and that the best you can do is use your manners and be kind and friendly. If you can do that, you will always find someone who wants to hang out with you. And that sometimes it can be hard to make new friends, but the rewards are great.

He agreed to go (we were nearly an hour late), and before we left home we rehearsed asking Christian if he would like to play.

This afternoon, when I went to pick him up, he was surrounded by kids, happily drawing away. About six of the kids piped up with, “Inigo, your mum’s here!”. He ran to me, and on the way home told me that he and Christian had played together.

It feels like a huge win. I am so proud of that kid, I could burst.

Mark took Inigo out for his first tandem bike ride today, most of the way to preschool. Hopefully, tomorrow will be dry enough that we can take all the bikes to the park so that we can go for a ride together

Thanks to mum for picking up the tool to install it, and getting Inigo a hat that actually fits his enormous head!

Just spoke to Chad from the admissions center, told him the whole story, burst into tears, and he was really helpful.

Hes going to look further into it, and get back to me on Monday or Tuesday.

In the meantime, Im going to change my preferences to put a BA into the mix. With an entry ATAR of 75, its much more likely that I will get in, and the switch from there.

Ill pick her up on a day or so. And the name may change, but its working for me today.

Were getting Squish a half bike, so we’ll be able to ride to preschool together at the end of the month. Squeee!

Updated- I bought Ermentrude from Cell Bikes in Stanmore. Link here.

I got a letter from UAC today – they needed me to provide a certified copy of my marriage certificate, and certified copies of both my ABA qualifications.

Much to my astonishment, I managed to find all the documents I needed (with a bit of help from mum), get copies, get the copies certified, and get them in the post – all in one day.

I also had another chat with a UAC phone jockey, who said that main round offers are not until the 18th of January. I have the option of paying about $120 and getting my application turned into an ATAR like number (so that I can have a rational assessment of my chances of getting in to the course I want at the uni I want). Or I can wait.

It’s going to be a long wait.

A million years ago, when I first worked in an Apple reseller, I met a cool guy called “A”. Recently, Mark and I decided to buy a NAS, and I rang him to talk turkey. Not only was he still in the computer hardware business, he was also about to get married.

At the registry office.

Nothing wrong with that, but it does lack a certain personal touch. I told him I was a celebrant, and suggested that he might consider getting married at the party celebrating the marriage, instead of before the party or after the party. “But I’m going to be dressed as a taco”, he said.

“And?”, said I.

So today, in front of their nearest and dearest, instead of having speeches and cake to represent a commitment, we had a wedding. He dressed as a taco, she as an Egyptian goddess. Me, a Catholic nun.

It was an impossibly joyful ceremony, the bride and groom were emotional and proud, and so excited to be able to declare their commitment in front of their friends and families without the weight of expectation that usually accompanies weddings.

The ceremony went off perfectly, the crowd were surprised, thrilled, and very supportive. And Mark, Inigo and I had a wonderful day, surrounded with love and positivity.

Archie and Aubrey weren’t forgotten, they were with us every second. Yesterday I remembered their birth, and today, the anniversary of the day Archie died, I celebrated life.

It’s been a little quiet around here – the big assignment for this semester was due at midnight tonight. I got it in at 11.50pm.

I don’t see an HD on the horizon for this bit of writing!

Perceptions of infidelity in committed relationships correlated with Cognitive Experiential Self Theory.

Phew!

We’re all about natural consequences in this house. Don’t put your dirty clothes in a dirty clothes basket? Eventually you will run out of clean underwear. Don’t pack away your toys? Mama will pack them away and she might hide them or put them in the bin.

So I can’t blame anyone but myself for this weekend.

The natural consequence for having done bugger all uni work for half a semester, is that I have until midnight tomorrow night to do two online tests. One for each subject. Worth 10%, and 12% of my total mark.

Between my gorgeous girlfriends, my fabulous in-laws, my amazing parents, and my wonderful husband, I am getting there. One down, the bulk of the work done for the other (with some major revision tomorrow), and I’ll have it done and dusted by tomorrow afternoon.

Thanks also go to my wonderful kid, who had to get used to being away from mama a lot last year, and he bears it well. And I get the most wonderful cuddles when he comes back to me

Here is a little video I took of him and Mark “reading” a book last week. I thought I was filming earlier, but I missed all the good bits, him sounding out words, and the absolutely priceless expression on his little face when he works it out. He is loving reading to himself a lot now, so I hope I may get a better video soon.

Inigo has a cavity in his right back lower molar. We took him to a specialist dentist last week, and found out that the enamel on that tooth never formed properly during my pregnancy, so that is why it has rotted. He isn’t in pain, but left untreated it will get worse and cause infections, eventually damaging the tooth underneath (his adult tooth). So we have to do something about it. The specialist quoted us $1800 for the dental work, plus $1200 for a day stay in hospital, plus $600 for the anaesthetist. THe better part of $4,000.

So today we went to my normal dentist for a second opinion. I had my teeth cleaned, while Inigo watched patiently. Then she had a quick look at his teeth while he watched tele in the roof. Then, she did a quick x-ray to determine how bad the decay was.

And then she told me she could treat it in the chair, without a general anaesthetic!!!

Which she then did, all while Inigo watched ABC for Kids. There are serious advantages to rationing TV watching!

All the treatment for both of us cost less than $200, including x-rays. So we went out for sushi and bought some gorgeous wooden blocks, and still felt thrifty.

Picked all this for our minestrone lunch. I love having a productive garden!

I wonder what sort of uniform the nerd superhero wears?

There is still a few glitches (can’t leave blog comments), but I have my calendar back, and I have all my blog feeds! Normality is resuming, and I adore my husband. Not just for his good looks!

And tonight is results night. Pizza and red wine are on the menu, my friend Dionne is coming from Newcastle with her kids, and we are going to cover the kitchen in flour and dough while we wait for those crucial text messages. Dionne was in my environmental peace unit, so we are supporting each other.

And tomorrow I am teaching small children to knit. Give me strength!

And here is a picture of a small boy playing an orange ukelele.

After Archie and Aubrey were born, a grief counsellor from SIDS & Kids came to our house to talk to me. SInce then I’ve been seeing her on and off pretty regularly, and I credit Marybeth with a lot of the progress I have made. Without her, and SIDS & Kids, I hesitate to think where I would be now.

I used to think that all they did was fund medical research into SIDS, but of course they do much more than that. Since SIDS awareness campaigns have massively reduced SIDS deaths, now the bulk of their work is with bereaved families after the loss of a baby or child. They also offer counselling to women who have had miscarriages, and terminations.

While looking for ways I can help out (it’s Red Nose Day this Friday, buy a nose!), I found this website. Renault is donating a dollar (up to $15,000) for every person that uploads a pic to the red nose gallery. Visit rednoseme.com, and upload your own pic – SIDS & Kids will earn a dollar, and you’ll get a silly photo.

I just submitted my Environmental Peace assignment. It was worth 60% of my mark for the unit. No pressure.

My darling friend Dionne read it and gave some great feedback, and I submitted it 40 minutes shy of a whole week late. I did get an extension, so I hope that won’t matter, and whatever the outcome, I am so incredibly relieved to have it over and done with, that at this point I am a bit beyond caring about results.

Tomorrow my focus is going to be on my dear family friend who is having surgery to remove her brain tumour, and after that I need to jam in as much study as I can into the next week. I have an open book quiz to do in the next few days, and then my final psych exam on the 15th.

And after the 15th, I am free as a bird. Until next semester starts…

I first posted about the bread here.

Then here after I refined the recipe a little.

But now I’ve done a final re-jig to make the recipe work for me. I buy flour in 2kg bags, so I asked my maths man to do the numbers so I didn’t have to measure 13 cups of flour each time.

So now I use 2kg of flour, 4 tablespoons of bakers yeast, 2 tablespoons of salt, and 1.6 litres of warm water. Mix, and dump into a tub that will go into the fridge.

What I have found is that I can just throw a lump of dough into a bread pan lined with baking paper and it makes a nice dense, almost sourdough like loaf. If you like, you can also brush it with milk and scatter sesame seeds, caraway seeds, poppy seeds, or my favourite, nigella seeds on top before baking.

Or, you can work the dough a little, and leave it in the pan to warm up to room temperature before baking for a lighter loaf.

You can also use wholemeal flour, with exactly the same recipe.

And it makes wonderful french toast, and after a day, fantastic dippers for your baked brie. Recipe to come one day….

I used to have a nifty bit of software called Blue Phone Elite, which allowed me to type SMS’s on my laptop and send them from my phone via bluetooth.

But then the developer went and got a real job, and stopped supporting it, which meant I never got it to work with my iPhone. Small price to pay for having an iPhone, but I was starting to show my age with my monosyllabic text replies.

“yes”, in reply to a younger friends “busy today? I have some time and it would be great to catch up, how about meeting up at the zoo, the kids will love it” was just bloody pathetic.

Now I can SMS at 50 words per minute, with no damn auto correct!

Thank you SMS Sender(free) and SMS Client ($2.49).

(picture is of my beautiful boy at the zoo today, waiting for the seal show to start)

Two words to describe grief.

I’ve had to take a major step forward this week, and leave a personal issue in the past. That, and my conversations with Inigo have meant that the last two weeks have been the worst since Archie died. No. Last Monday was the worst day (bar the 6th of November 2010), of my entire life.

But I made a decision to stick with uni, and I have an assignment due on Monday. So I have had to get a grip, and knuckle down. Assignment one in “Environmental Peace” has been electronically submitted tonight, and now I have tomorrow to catch up on a week of psychology homework. Ask me about salinity in the Murray-Darling Basin

It doesn’t mean I am not sad, or inhuman, just that I realise that my choices are mine to grasp, not to passively accept the weight of the crap that has rained down on me in these last 12 months.

And today? Inigo told me that he didn’t want to go and see Alex (possibly his favourite person), because he wanted to stay with mama. Maybe I am doing a better job of staying jolly in front of him? Or maybe he accepts that I am flawed, and loveable anyway.

I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about how I can connect better with the kid, so he doesn’t feel like my sadness is overwhelming for him. And frankly, dropping out of uni isn’t the answer. I think that the key to being less sad around the kid is actually being less sad. And actually achieving something with my life that isn’t about doing something for Inigo (not that that isn’t fulfilling ) is ultimately going to be the fastest ride out of sadville.

I’ve also connected with another mum who lost a baby at 23 weeks. She is a few years further down the road than I am, so I am really interested in both her experiences of loss and how she survived, but also in how her elder child is dealing with things. She sent me an email telling me that my crazy “why not do a psychology degree” behaviour is actually pretty typical in her experience. She said that in her support group, a lot of the mums did something a bit crazy within about 4 months of losing their babies. Some moved interstate or overseas, some left marriages, some began to study, or quit study if they were already enrolled. She tried to cut all her hair off and move interstate, but was talked down by a kind hairdresser. So what I am doing isn’t abnormal, or strange for those of us “in the club”, it just looks quite mental from the outside. I can live with that.

Inigo is an awesome kid (who apparently prefers his name to be written in a serifed font), and I suppose there are just going to be more and more times when he outsmarts me. So the sooner I get that psych degree (with a major in child development!), the better.

Tomorrow I am off to the ABA conference, where I hope to see Dr James McKenna (click the link then scroll down to see his theory about limbic regulation, fascinating) speak about co-sleeping, and all sorts of other wonderful insights about boobs and how to use them. And then Thursday with the kid, then Friday to finish my essay for Environmental Peace (I am doing salinity in the Murray Darling Basin), the weekend to play with the kid and do a final draft of my essay, ready to submit on Sunday night.

And by then, of course, this shitty, shitty fortnight will be behind me, and I will be looking forward to my first High Distinction. Onwards and upwards!

But does teaching my bird how to do a trick using positive reinforcement count as homework?

Today is my first full study day!

Inigo listening to “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing” by the Scissor Sisters while eating his weet bix. He now knows what mama’s headphones are for. Though I was using them for listening to lectures, honest!

One. Never apply for university on the evening that applications close. You are bound to make a rookie mistake, like applying for a course you have no hope of getting into, and neglecting to make sensible choices about your second and third preferences.

I put “Bachelor of Psychology with Honours” as my first preference. Which I had no hope of getting into without an ATAR of about 90 (or equivalent in work experience, or study, etc).

Then I put Social work as my second choice. I got into social work.

Two. When you make a mistake, or don’t get what you want, ALWAYS ASK FOR FORGIVENESS. Or help, or a favour, or whatever. But always ask. Because if you don’t ask, you won’t get. And if you do ask, you might just get…

…offered a place in a Bachelor of Psychological Sciences!!!!

And if I can maintain good results, I might get to do the honours year down the track, and still become a psychologist.

So now I am choosing subjects, and trying to navigate my way around the uni web services, with a view to starting on Valentines day.