My Idyllic Location

The above home is for sale, and it's in my favourite place...Mount Tamborine. I want to live there, but AW is not keen. Mainly because of the travel. I've always wanted to live there, and I intend to one day. For now, I'd be happy with a small cottage.

Lately though, I've been thinking about living in my idyllic location and about the home I want. It doesn't look exactly like this home for sale, but everything else I want is right there. I'd love more of a classic country cottage style home with big verandah's all round. And it has to be white!

Now that I have a young child, I'm finding that it's something I yearn for. I'd love Philomena to have a more carefree childhood and be able to run around outside freely. To get involved with, appreciate and come to love nature. She loves helping me in the garden. I'd love to have chooks...I'd love for her to have animals and pets...to play, and to have a childhood which is more connected with nature and people, and to experience a kind of life not found in the suburbs. I'd love to have a big vegetable patch, and a bigger herb garden. To cook and make everything from scratch and share all of this with Philomena. I'd love her to experience more of that sense of community and family. She does have that now to a smaller extent, because of my involvement as chairperson of our body corporate, and the fact that our complex is very community minded. We do alot of visiting and Philomena is such a social little girl. We also have close ties to family and close friends and visit them regularly.

I bought a couple of books the other day. One is called 'What's Happening to Our Girls'...Too Much Too Soon...How our kids are overstimulated, oversold and oversexed', by Maggie Hamilton, and the other is 'Adproofing Your Kids'...Raising critical thinkers in a media-saturated world', by Tania Andrusiak and Daniel Donahoo. Both books are Australian publications. They are well worth the reading, if you are concerned about how your children are growing up in this world and want to know how to address these issues.

It's such a minefield out there. As parents, we are up against so much and kids these days are growing up in a world so different from when we were kids. Reading these types of books really opens your eyes to things that are brimming below the surface, and in our busy self-asbsorbed lives, it's so easy to miss what's really going on out there.

My own personal observation is that people are so busy trying to give their children everything in the material sense, that they fail to realise that in doing so, they compromise giving their children what they really need...time. Not only are parents themselves busy, but so are their children. Children are so stressed out because they are doing what their parents are doing...rushing around and filling their days with 'stuff', with barely any time to talk to each other and connect. Not only are parents and children struggling to connect with each other, but children are struggling to connect with their own feelings.

I've also been reading Country Style magazine. I love this publication! Not only are there beautiful photos of country homes and gardens, but they publish stories of real people and families and their individual stories about how they came to live where they live. People of differing backgrounds. The magazine is rich in content, not just photographics and makes for interesting reading.

Anyway...I've been very busy getting my home ship-shape and busy in the garden. It's an early spring clean. I love gardening and have immersed myself in it over the past week. It's been an escape for me and very therapeutic.

Life has come to a critical point, where everything has been thrown together. It's times like these when fighting it is futile. Routine goes out the window, and you're having to deal with things on a daily basis.

Our 25 year high school reunion is next week, and even though I'm looking forward to it, it's been a long 18 months of planning and preparing. And I'm ready for it to be over, so I can get on with some type of normality. Of course, this is just part of the mix. I leave for Bandiana in a couple of weeks for my employment training and I'm away for 2 weeks. So AW has been away quite a bit, before I go. Philomena has become quite rebellious in the last couple of weeks, and things had got to a (boiling) point where it was time for me to put aside my own goals and schedule, and concentrate on her as well as stem the flow of other urgent demands.

As I've eluded to in recent posts, my schedule is in bad need of reorganising and letting go of a few things. For me to give of myself more fully and with more focus, to not only my own pursuits, but to Philomena and AW, I need to create more space and time in my life, so there is time to consider what is most important. Children need time and patience. Life needs to be at a pace which allows time to observe and consider carefully, and be able to respond with more thought to the people around you.

There have been other things that have needed by urgent attention, but I won't go into those. They are just things that have added to the mix. This year seems to be one of those roller-coaster years, and when I look at it realistically, I think the remainder of the year is probably not going to change much. It's been a year of experimentation and adjustment.

I'm between a rock and a hard place, and it's been struggle street the entire year. But you know, life is like that. It's not a smooth ride. There's peaks and troughs, but there's also that place in-between. I'm there at this moment. I hit a peak. I'm not in a trough, but I'm in-between on my way back up to a peak. I just haven't redefined exactly the road to get me back there. And my intuition tells me that's it's going to take the remainder of the year to work out how to get back there exactly.

Part of my melancholy is the fact that I've worked extremely hard this year and I've been so tired. It's been a week where I've felt that some of my efforts have seemed futile, and it's got me down. It's because I've been fighting to keep myself afloat with the challenges I've faced. I am...so...very...tired. There also hasn't been any consistency this year, and that can really wear you down emotionally.

Apart from that, life is still good and I'm glad to be me! There is so much to be thankful for...even the challenges.