Procrastinating....

...I'm good at that

I vaguely remember sitting down a while back. I vaguely remember making an entry along the lines of "I really need to get back into this whole blog business". I vaguely remember trying to make a conscious effort.

But hey...better late than never right??

(I can't for the life of me remember what font or font size I used to use.....am guessing this will look completely different to earlier entries...oh well...)

Sometimes things happen in life that make you sit back and reassess everything. They might be big things or small things but no matter how big they often have a huge effect.

There was an explosion here yesterday - at the service station diagonally across from our house. A diesel tanker exploded without warning - the owner of the service station died. A middle-aged man, married with 5 children - the eldest of them 21.

Only a few hours earlier I had been into the servo for petrol...had a chat to his wife when she served me just like any other day...wished her a nice day as I left. 3 hours later and her whole world has been turned upside down.

The mood in town is very subdued - a small town, everyone knows everyone else - this is affecting everybody. How suddenly things can change...no warnings...nothing...how fragile human life really is.

RIP Tony

I realise now that I am leaving major gaps  - small town?? WTF?? Last time I posted regularly I was still living in Doonside....how time changes things in big ways huh?

To cut a very long story short - we had to move. Guess most folk are aware of teh rental crisis going on in Sydney...yep..got us too! Owner of our place was unable to keep up mortgage repayments so had to sell...at very short notice. I lost count of the number of properties I looked at in Sydney that were within budget- most of which would not have been suitable for housing animals - and there was hot competition for those! In the time frame I had to work with (bear in mind we had to vacate early in the new year so looking in the run up to Christmas etc not a lot of fun) I drove hundreds of kms in the surrounding suburbs in the hope of finding somewhere suitable that wasn't going to blow my budget completely out of the water. Alas....mission impossible. Lots of sympathetic real estate agents but sympathy doesn't put a roof over the heads of kids.

A house came up...in my old home town *gulp*. The biggest appeal - the rent less than half of what we had been paying in Sydney already and about a third of what I was looking at having to pay to stay there.

The old home town....in the middle of freaking nowhere! argh

We moved - between Christmas and New Year.

6 months on I am almost used to the fact that the nearest Woolworths is 50kms away. The nearest "good" shopping centre a mere 70kms away. I very quickly learned to be efficient with shopping but man oh man, there are so many times I really miss my old IGA being just around the corner.

I miss civilisation often...but am getting used to the much slower pace of life here. I don't know how long we will stay....but for now it is working out ok. (So many things that at this moment are popping into my head.....but need to get them into a semblance of order before trying to share them.)

The shitty times are less than they were - have certainly been a lot of good times - the balance is there.

And so back to today...

have spent the hours while the kids are at school sitting here and reading this blog of mine. It has been a long time since I went through it. So long since I read any of it. Some of it seems so remote and vague.....other parts of it I have literally been laughing out loud.

This time...I promise myself as much as anyone else... I really will start sitting back down and writing.

PS....have taken note of the comments you gusy have left and the messages as well re the other blog site...am going to get a move on over there as well when the motivation really does kick in......see you on the other side!!

Welcome back....again

6:40 PM, 17/6/2008 .. Posted by snowy

Good to hear from you, cc. I did wonder how you were doing. Small towns have their obvious disadvantages, but they have their pluses too.

I did read about that explosion, and felt for the family concerned. One minute life is placid, the next their world falls apart. So sad.

Will look out for you on the other side. I've been in the UK for six weeks, so haven't posted for a while. I'm still trying to recover from jetlag a week after arriving home.

Thanks snowy...again

6:52 PM, 17/6/2008 .. Posted by cc1804

I really do need to get my butt into gear...sort of new year's resolution mid year??!??

Figured a lot of people will have seen yesterday's news re the explosion..it was all over the news online as well as TV. Very sad :( :(

WOW @ the 6 weeks in the UK....hope you had a fantastic holiday. Ughhh @ the jetlag....is so much worse flying from the northern hemisphere to the southern for some reason...hope it clears soon for you :)