Secrets

Well it is not a large secret, just a little something that I have started but not told too many people about.
You see I joined the gym.

Now I know thats quite a shock but I felt I had to do something because I wasn't doing anything. Steve is doing Judo twice a week and many times he kept telling me to do something active.

So many weeks ago I joined and I am loving it.
I am not sure if I have lost any weight, but then I never joined to loose weight, I joined to get more exercise.

I have got into a routine, which is one of the important things about trying to get there regularly, I attend the gym at the same time as the boys going to Judo, it helps that the gym is just round the corner, so they drop me off on the way and I walk over when I have finished. I usually get to see the last 15 mins of their Judo.
I also go on a Wednesday morning after taking the boys to school.

So I am now attending 3 times a week, sometimes, although I must be feeling really unwell at these times, I have even been known to go on a Saturday morning.

The other day I had the worst day ever at work, I was seething when I finished work, and the feeling wouldn't go away, so I went and pounded it out on the cross trainer. And man did it feel good afterwards, I had calmed down considerably by the time I was finished and it felt good.

I am loving the feeling when I have been to the gym, I can see why some people can get addicted to it. However the gym is on the first floor and for the first few sessions I had trouble leaving each time due to the fact my legs were like jelly walking down the stairs. I admit I had to hold the handrail and walk slowly, but luckily that feeling has now passed and it is nice to have that stretching of my legs as I leave the gym.

The biggest help of all at the end of the day is the fact my family are behind me on this and make it as easy as possible for me to get there whenever I want.

Oppotunity Knocking

I am one that always believes that if you don't go for something when you see it, then you may miss out.
Life's an adventure and let's have some fun along the way.
The worst that can happen is that you fall on your behind and have to pick yourself up and start again, but sometimes that can be fun too.

I think my parents instilled this fun adventure into me, with the nomadic life we have lived then adventure is always something I am happy to go on.
Ok, I am not so sure if all the adventures the family have taken were what everyone wanted but I am sure looking back we had fun taking risks along the way.

2 weeks ago at work there was an ad for expressions of interest in joining a group to look at change and waste management within the hospital. Now waste management is looking at process and usage waste not good old fashion trash!

Anyhow, I showed my interest because it looked interesting. 1 quick group meeting to find out more info, the lucky chance of being called to a one on one meeting and this week I have been seconded for a year to the project as of Oct 1.

I am excited and looking forward to it. My current department is fun but not my total cup of tea. I sure can't see me staying here for the remainder of my career, so the ability to go away for a year is most apleasing to me.

The other advantage of moving to a desk job is that my blogging may stay up to date cause I will be able to post when I want to.

Inspiration

As many of you know, I am currently working towards achieving my Batchelors Degree in Nursing. Yes I am a nurse but I only have a Diploma, so am upskilling myself.
Now I am doing this all very slowly, 1 paper every semester, and seeing as each semester is about 5 months long I am therefore only getting 2 papers done a year.
With 4 papers to complete it is taking me until the end of next year to complete.

I am doing these papers by distant learning and that is where it can be hard work, however I have managed occassionally to get to the 1 lecture available each week, however the lecture is held in Rotorua which just happens to be 1hr 20mins drive away, so a huge afternoon away for just a 2 hour lecture.

The last sememster however finished in June, although my last essay was due in end of May (which I passed successfully by the way). This new paper just started at the end of July, so I had down time of nearly 8 weeks and thus lies the problem, my mojo for the next paper has yet to be sparked!

So yesterday I winged wheeled my way to Rotorua for the first lecture I could manage to get to, even though this is currently week 4! I even managed to leave dinner cooking so the family had something to eat when they got home before me.
And I am so glad I managed to get to the lecture. It was the total inspiration that I needed to kick start me into getting this paper completed.

Like the last paper I have 2 essays to complete on Nursing Law and Ethics and Leadership. 1 due middle of September and the 2nd due end of October. Neither essay is going to take too much to complete but you need the inspiration to hit the ground and run with it.

I will always be the first to admit that distant learning is not for me, it is hard and I struggle with the lack of contact with other people. I enjoy going to lectures as I always come away from them with some new information that helps me further, but then isn't that the whole point of lectures, to help you further even if you have to do reading yourself?
This lecture just goes to prove it, things fell into place yesterday and I know realise that I was looking at things from a slightly different angle and am now back on the straight again.
I have managed to rearrange family life and work so I can attend the next 2 lectures as well and hopefully this will assist me further and all will be fine.

The course tutor obviously has faith as she was already asking me which paper I am thinking of starting next year with ??

Back Up

How often have you read somewhere about someone having their computer crashing and loosing all their favorite pictues or documents?
Yes, I have many times.
Now never fear we have not had any accidents with the computer but it does always sit in the back of my mind.
I have mentioned to Steve a few times that we really do need to do something, just in case.
Now being married to a guy who knows so much about IT you would expect us to be all organised and sorted....wrong.

However, our computer has been playing a little silly recently. It has suddenly gone very slow, although there is still a lot of space available. We don't have many programmes running in the background and suddenly the music programmes on the computer all stopped working. It kept coming up with errors regarding 'unable to find that song' or 'that file no longer exsists'.

Steve said he would try some stuff but I suddenly had this horror thought that something may happen and we would crash the computer, thus having to spend a lot of money to get some nice company to retrieve all our favorite docs from the old harddrive, if at all possible.

So at 7.45pm on a Sunday evening I suggested he go to the Warehouse and see if they had an external harddrive.
$160 later and a harddrive of 1 terrabit (available space now of about 4 times our computer) we sat and went through everything on our computer, worked out what we would like saved and copied it all onto the harddrive. Pictures, files, documents & music.
So now we have a back up of everything we want to never lose. The harddrive is now hidden in the house well away from our computer so god forbid, if we were ever burgled, we would still have that first ever picture taken of Ben when he was an hour old etc.

I now have to try and remember to get Steve to back up the harddrive ever 3 months or so, cause then at least we will only loose 3 months worth of stuff and not everything!!

Hamilton Bloggers

Are there any Kiwi Mummy Bloggers out there in the Hamilton area.
If so leave me a comment, would love to come and visit you.

Quitting

Yes that does say quit not quilt, and no I am not quitting quilting.
Alex however decided the other day that he was quitting school!
I, wanting him to accept the consequences for his own actions, agreed with him however I did have specifications to go with it....
He had to inform his teachers.

He was a little taken back by this and asked me to explain. I simply told him that I was happy for him (my 6yr old) to quit school but that he had to go to school and tell his 2 teachers why he was quitting and then he also had to go to the Principle and tell him as well.
I then said that I was happy for him to leave school.

He thought this over for a few minutes and then happily annouced to me that he had changed his mind and would continue to attend school.

Flying By......!

Time really does fly by when you are having fun.
Just read on my dashboard that I last posted on July 23, geez that was almost 4 weeks ago, life must have been good.

Life is good actually.

The family have suddenly discovered the joy of actually helping around the house and therefore having time to themselves.
For the last 2 weekends the boys have happily helped with what ever chores need completing, this has then been reflected in the fact that we all get to spend Sunday doing what ever we want.
Sitting around watching movies, reading books, filling the lounge floor with train track or lego.

Guilt free I have managed to sit and read a book and not worry that washing needs folding and put away or vacuuming done, cause it has all been finished and completed by the whole family.

However I am not holding my breath over how long this may last!
But if there is any one up there listening to my prayers.....then please help me to make this last at least a few more weeks.