Smile

 There is a golf club up the road with a bright LED sign.  The sign is right on the boundary so that anyone driving past can clearly read it.  It advertises the bistro specials, particular golf days and then it tells you to smile.  I first noticed it a couple of months ago as I was waiting at the lights (the sign is placed just behind the lights) it told me about a lunch special and then a smiley face appeared with the word "Smile" next to it.  I had to double check I wasn't seeing things, it was completely random.  But it was there and then it was back to the lunch specials.  The lights changed and as I drove passed I smiled.

Since then I always notice it.  I smile everytime, sometimes when I smile I realise I must have had quite a frown on my face.  Everything feels better.  I look for the sign now, I look for the smile.  Sometimes as I drive passed, it doesn't, but I smile anyway.  In my head I am saying "Tell me to Smile!"  I want to see the face I want to smile.  I don't know why they do it, what they wanted to achieve but I like it, I smile, it makes the day better, as random as it is, although I am yet to still try the bistro.

This week and a half has been busy.  A puppy is so much work, I don't remember this much energy being spent on Mr C, but I am sure it was.  But I am smiling.  I might not have time for much else now and the kitchen bench may not be cleared and the items for ebay are still waiting to have their picture taken but I am smiling.  Raz is getting bigger already, and this is such a brief period.  He will be an adult before we know it, and he will loose his little baby noises, and his soft fur and I won't be able to pick him up with one hand.  As much work as he is, he makes me smile everytime and I can say now that he has fit into our family perfectly, and I am happy with the four of us.  Me and My Boys.

Introducing Raz

I decided to take this week off work to help Raz settle in.  We took Mr C home just before Christmas and we already had a week and a half off and it was good to have that time to settle him in, and most importantly toilet train him.  I decided to take a week off to do the same for Raz, I didn't want to bring him home and the next day leave him alone for 8 hours.  My timesheet at work says I am on Recreation Leave.  Hubby made the mistake of saying I was on holidays.  I wish.  I need a holiday.  I personally think I am on maternity leave.

I actually thought having a week off would give me time to do stuff around the house as well as play mum.  Things I struggle to find the time to do, like rearrange the pantry, get into our junk room that still has unopened boxes and unpack a few more things (that clearly we don't need if we have gone this long without).  I even thought I would be able to list a load of unwanted items on ebay.  Instead I have done a trillion loads of washing and mopping the floors, twice.  Being Wednesday I think the pantry is going to have to wait another couple of weeks or so.  

Everyone feels the need to comment that I should get used to it, because when we decide to have a family it will be like this but worse.  This is usually said by people who already have kids, or our parents who have been there done that.  This comment is always followed with a loud laugh, an apparent inside joke that we are not yet in on.  It is not helpful, nor is hubby when he said to me last night that I do not appear to be suited to 'Housewife'.  He almost slept on the couch.

So welcome to the family Raz, mum and dad love you, although we are a little frustrated with your zero warning signs when it comes to peeing, and as for our first born, your big brother Mr C, well, all I can say is that he has no choice but to accept you, and I am sure in due course he will.  I hope.

Are You Having A Baby?

 Mr C as a baby, we had only taken him home 2 days earlier

Yesterday afternoon a client asked if I was having a baby.  I had to think about this as everyone in the office knows I am having a baby, a pug baby.  But then as I looked at her I realised she was staring at my belly.  My PCOS belly.

Since I left uni and my (then un-diagnosed) PCOS symptoms started, I have always been an apple shape and as time went on and my symptoms got worse my belly grew.  I always though I would be asked if I was pregnant, I thought it looked like I was always around 4 months along.  But no one ever said anything because it is a social rule never to ask, even if a woman looks like she is about to drop you still are not supposed to ask.

I said ''No".  The woman looked horrified and began apologizing and saying she shouldn't have said anything.  In the middle of this awkward moment I spewed forth verbal diarrhea of "No not yet" and "Only a dog" followed with "No drama don't worry about it".

But it has stuck with me.  I was wearing what I thought was a very flattering black dress that I doubt I will touch again.  I even had my special 'suck-in' undies on.  Maybe I am just not trying hard enough.   Maybe I am using my PCOS as an excuse to do a half job.  Sure PCOS is why I struggle with weight and why it sits around my belly but isn't it also my get out of jail free card for not losing weight?  I have PCOS therefore I can't lose weight? I have PCOS therefore I have a big belly and that means I don't have to do anything about it?  This client has certainly given me a lot to think about, perhaps I really do need to get on with a healthier lifestyle just a little bit more than I am. Maybe it is time to put more into my efforts and cut out the remaining excuses.  Perhaps her brazen comment was exactly the shake up I needed.  I know I will ponder this over the weekend in the back of my mind, that is until our new baby does come along on Sunday afternoon.

Expecting

We have been a little pre-occupied this week.  Only 3 more sleeps.  Hubby and I have been thinking for a long time that it was time to expand our little family of 3 to 4.  Mentally we are ready, the house is almost ready and after a little shopping spree I think we have everything that we need.  We have been waiting for months.  And on the weekend we found out that the pregnancy we were backing on wasn't to be.  However by some small chance, on Monday morning a tiny little add popped up, I made the call and here we are.

Mr C needs a buddy, I feel bad that we work full time, he is happy but whenever he goes to the kennels dog resort he goes off.  He loves it there.  The owner has a pug, his name is Gilbert, and Gilbert and Mr C are the best of friends, so we knew that when the time was right we could only go with another pug.  The breeder sent through the photo to me on Monday morning and as soon as I laid eyes on him, I knew, he was The One.  I sent it through to Hubby and he agreed.  I quickly made arrangements for us to go down there on Sunday to take him home.  He is 8 weeks today so the timing is perfect.

I am very clucky right now, for the puppy of course.  My mum is excited she loves Mr C, treats him like a grandson, which he is really.  We treat him like a really baby, while we don't go to the extreme some other owners go, he does walk around naked for example, he is the centre of attention every evening.  And we talk about him all the time as if he was our son.  When we first moved in one of the neighbours came around introducing themselves, pointing our their children, proudly showing off the latest addition, a 6 month old bubba.  I picked up Mr C and introduced him as our only child.  Fortunately they smiled instead of walking away wondering who on earth had just moved in next door.

Hubby's mum was very disappointed with the news, she wants a real baby so bad, but I told her, having two pugs will be perfect practise, once we have this down pat maybe then we will be ready for the real thing.  Surely we are not the only childless couple out there with fur babies who treat them like real children?

Friday

I think I may have been harsh on Sydney yesterday.  I was up very early on a train and with very little sleep.  I feel much better today although I am still on the train with little sleep.  It is a beautiful day this morning and watching the sun emerge over the mountains and light up the lake on the way down  certainly put a smile on my face.  

It is perfect Friday weather and while I wish I was retired and out on the lake I know I will enjoy today for everything I will learn.  I am very fortunate right now to have so many options.  To be close to the City if I need a little culture and to have the option on weekends to escape to the beach, the lake or the hinterland.  While deep down I long for our Rural Dream, it doesn't take away from how much I love where we are now or just how fortunate we are.  Happy Friday.

Sydney

I am off to Sydney today and tomorrow for work, a 3 hour round trip on a train.  I find these days really draining, I have to get up early and I get home so late and my routines and health approaches I have been working on recently get pushed aside for too much coffee and crap take away.  And no physical exercise expect for a pushy, polluted, 10 minute walk underground from the train station to the office.  

I have a love/hate relationship with this place.  When I lived there even though it was more a love relationship, I still felt uncomfortable and had this feeling deep down that I didn't belong.  I used to be so proud to let anyone know I was "Sydney Born & Bred".  Now I just keep that to myself unless someone really wants or needs to know. 

Even though we have broken up, she isn't out of my life completely just yet.  Aside from the occasional work commitments, my entire family is there.  And being only an hour by car we have been seduced to head South for a day, sometimes even a weekend.  It won't be for another 5 years until we are able to truly break away.  

We hear a lot up here about the "housing crisis" in Sydney, apparently the only way is up now, and modern living will be in apartments.  I look around here to see the small farms, with their chickens or stud cattle or fruit and veg greenhouses slowly disappear to make way for more housing.  Not units but small blocks for a decent size house and a strip of yard.  There is another way up here, but it is also a reminder that this is not our "forever place".  In fact now that I consider myself a true local, most locals now fear that the place is turning into Sydney and I couldn't agree more, I can already start to feel the discomfort return.

Fortune

Last night we went out to dinner to a Chinese restaurant we went to quite a few times when we lived in Sydney.  It is one of those places you go for the food and for the man that runs the joint.  The decor is heavily outdated and there is nothing flash inside but the owner is the only one on the floor.  He is the one that comes over to take your order while cracking a few jokes, brings the food with another serving of jokes and brings plastic containers when you get your fortune cookies.

I don't believe in fortune cookies, I remember last year I had one that read "Other people will be happy that you are wrong".  It stuck out because it would have to have been the most random, out there one I have ever seen, I even stuck it on my wall at work because of its weirdness.  It made me wonder what else was in the cookie.

I grabbed the two cookies and put them behind my back, mixed them around and asked Hubby to choose.  Hubby had; "You have an important new business development shaping up."  Mine read "You will enjoy good health."

Hubby and I looked at each other unable to speak.  Today Hubby finds out if he got the job he interviewed for on Wednesday.  The job that only himself and one other person interviewed for.  The reason we were in Sydney eating at the Chinese restaurant was because it was across the road from my Dr who I had just seen as a follow up.  I had lost 0.6kg which was quite a good effort considering my PCOS and pre-diabetic results.  I need good health and over the last month I have been making slow, little changes to improve things (as opposed to a massive life overhaul which always lasts under a week).

So for today, as weird as this sounds, we are both choosing to believe in the Cookie.  A phrase I never thought I would say.