Oh no!

I've just been talking to Dan's offsider 9who i think is the brains/owner) of the business - he's a good guy (wore shorts and jandals to my Sydney meeting - where I almost wore bubblegum) and doesn't do any sales schmooze - just an uber smart guy.

Anyhow, he told me he didn't think my business idea was going to work that well - actually, I added the "that well".

STINK.

He has a better way of doing it, he thinks it will work better, and be more focused on the users rather than the charities, which is basically my whole reason for doing this project. I think I was about to become a 'yes" person, willing to say anything to get a charity on board my website. He's reminded me that that's what it's not about.

Shite.

So we're going back a step. He's writing up what we just spent the last hour talking about, and I can stew on it.

I told you that Project Woman was no good - I feel like the big boss has just stepped in and given everyone, including me, a bollocking.

There you go, that's my Friday.

It will be damn hot what he's just suggesting though.

Lump in my throat

My Rafe is a gentle soul fascinated about things in life that most other 4 year olds aren't like electricity and plumbing, and he's the one we feel is going to need a bit of help "blending" into the normalities of life while still retaining his unique quirkiness that makes Rafe, Rafe. He's just recently started a new kindy that is more focused on learning than playing as along with his quirks, he's a smart wee cookie.

He doesn't love the Kindy, but he's savvy enough to know not to cry when I drop him off (if only Smith had the same smarts as I can still hearing him howling when I'm in the carpark at his pre-school).

So last night I could hear Will and Rafe chatting in their bed with Will imparting the brotherly advice of "just go tell the teacher, don't hit him, coz if you just tell on him them you won't get in trouble" - Will has a very strong sense of justice. I stuck my head in and asked what had happened.

Apparently, at lunchtime, some boys had poured water in Rafe's lunchbox making his lunch wet (and his seat wet which I think caused him the most concern as Rafe doesn't like getting wet), so Rafe had none of his lunch. And then they told him to go into a hole and stay there forever.

Gulp.

Sydney Stuff

I make no secret that we live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, so this weekend with the weather awesome, we headed to the beaches, firstly Saturday we headed up north to Newport beach - all the beaches up north are just stunning, with gorgeous sand, turqoise water and are just easy to do. On Saturday though there was a nasty big surf, the kind that just smashes you if you misjudge the waves. And Will and I got totally smashed. I got myself in a"bad wave" situation where I hesitated for a smidge about whether to go toward or away from the wave as it hovered above me. I made the wrong call and paid for it. It was the kind of incident that if you'd been watching from the shore, you would have sucked in your breath quickly with a "oh!" Sunday though we were back for more, and met up with some friends at Manly - we normally do the get there early, leave lunchtime routine, these friends are "stayers" and make a day of it. This time the girls went in and got smashed together. We were all a bit hot, bothered and salty so headed home. Saturday night had been a lovely meal with some kiwi friends at Dee Why beach with a paddle in the moonlight after dinner.

Sometimes we just have to pinch ourselves. Don't get me wrong, we could have done all of this in Auckland, we just didn't do it as much or as easily as we do here, and I think that's what I love about Sydney. It's who I am and what I do here that I like. Gad this is a bit heavy for a Monday morning.

It wasn't all good though, we decided to find a vantage point (along with the rest of the Northern Beach families,) to watch the "historic" passing of the two massive cruise liners, we got there in the early evening, found a park (finally), found a spot (finally) and waited for the 6.30pm passing. And waited. And waited. Finally one went by (and as we were a wee way from it it didn't look as massive as I was hoping (with my love of large vessels, buildings, etc). And when we (finally) got home later and watched the news, we worked out we'd missed the passing of the two by minutes.

Still, only a small disappointment on a great Sydney weekend.

And this was last Friday's fun

Imagine, one car, one small boy climbing in and out of it, one concrete ledge. the result, one egg, large, immediate and incredibly gross and scary. We zoomed off to the doctor, me, Smith and a lollipop, when we got there maybe it was the fast drive, the sugar from the lollipop or the adrenaline rush from an outing on a Friday at 5.30pm but Smith was bouncing off the walls literally, standing jumping in the middle of the waiting room, and generally just doing cute things. Absolutely no problems apart from the mothers guilt of not watching him close enough (I was vacuuming the car while he was playing). We did have the foresight to take a photo of the egg and clean the disgusting nappy he was wearing before our emergency trip.

At the airport

Have you ever had to do this in an airport? This lovely airport man offered our kids a ride on his buggy thing after there were tears trying to remove them from having a play on it. Will, who you can see, managed to drag himself away from his Nintendo long enough to have a ride - not sure how long it will be before he's too cool for this. The two little guys are hanging on for dear life behind him, and as nothing is ever easy with my guys, rafe originally didn't want a ride but ran screaming after the buggy when it took off (and he realised what he was missing) Buggy guy needed to reverse back up, pick up rafe and then take off again. What you can't see is three departure lounges full of people watching. Just decided to down load some pix so will pop a few on!

An Outing

At The Husbands conference I met The Tablecloth Lady who is a gorgeous woman with a gorgeous personality - we quickly "connected" and decided to keep our friendship developing. So on Wednesday, I packed up my boys and lunchboxes and headed over the bridge to Glebe, a lovely inner city suburb with a very english feel to it. I instantly wanted to live here and rang The Husband to tell him that (a) I'd made it over the bridge for the 4th time in a year (and KT you were with me for 2 of those), and that (b) I wanted to live in a fabulous terrace house like The Tablecloth lady's, as long as it had a pool and a park at the top of the street to kick a ball around in.

What amazed me most about my visit was what an awesome mum she was, ok so she used to be a teacher, and she's got one beautiful, quirky and well behaved little girl (instead of my 3 mad boys) but what an amazing role model for being a-most-excellent-mum. I'm inspired and motivated to do the same. I also want her beach house.

Whats the right word for when you are envious/admiring of someone's life and they're so nice that you're so happy for them?

My good motivations lasted as long as the afternoon when Smith for the zillionth time that day tried to climb into the drivers seat instead of his own and I had to prise his vice like grip off the steering wheel while coo'ing niceities (ie bribes) at him. I remember Rafe going through this stage at the same time and it only lasted a few months......sigh, last time.

And she christened herself The Tablecloth Lady due to some interesting dresses she wore at the conference, maybe in my situation, I would have called myself The Magic Boob Tape Lady.

What a week

I've had a bit of a mad week caused mostly by the fact I had a small issue with my web developers, specifically my website. I won't bore you with the details, but we had a tense e-mail standoff, basically they've had enough of my slow progress on my site and want to start charging a "management fee" by pulling some random date out of the air and threatening me with it. This didn't go down well, especially with the developers using such patronising terms as "we think you're doing such a SUPER thing" (and yes they did you the caps lock function a bit readily but with a patronising tone), I think I used expressions such as "perhaps next time in the interests of client relationships, if you have an issue, give me a call to chat through it rather than formalising it by e-mail and changing the tone of our working relationship..." get the drift, and yes it did take me ages to "craft" each response. Anyhow we're slowly sorted it, and i hope they've learnt that even though I may appear a bit dizzy and fluffy, those years of corporate training have still left a bit of pit bull terrior in me.

So we're back on track, I have got a time frame to work to and I'm upping my hours and pace a bit. We're up to all the tough process stuff now and although I'm nervous of it, I got a call from a techo guru from the project team who is on my case, so hopefully we'll progress!

Boring post, but just giving you a bit of context to my project and the problems I kind of need to head off sometimes. This one was even worth involving The Husband in.

I've worked it out!

I think I'm feeling so crap because I look like crap today, I've got this really bad pair of short things on that I've recently brought but which are such a bad design that even though they said they were a small size (which is why I bought them), must be cut so badly that they are always hanging down by my knees, and with the baggy pants I'm wearing an atrocious APRICOT (!!!) top that I bought on ebay (from an excellent brand) but still it's apricot. And my hair, well where do I start? Also I have been sitting for the last two hours beside my old breakfast bowl with a small puddle of smelly old bran flakes in it. Discount Dan has just called me to prepare me for our next mentoring session where we are going to talk about writing copy and how he has this excellent person who for a smidge of a price can write all my copy for me. NO!!! I LOVE writing the copy, but I detest dealing with the processes and roadblocks. And my clever entrepreneurial friend had warned me about the cross sell habits of Discount dan. I am prepared.

Righto, I'm going to get changed and this avo, a whole new me will be at my desk! Without the apricot top or the bran flakes.

Blah

Feeling very blah on the work front. Got a roadblock and it's getting bigger. I can't blame anyone apart from myself and my "work it out as I go along" strategy. I'd love to blame my schoomzy Discount Dan who in a mentoring session had promised me the reverse of what is actually the case. But I can't as I should have known this before it got to this stage.

So feeling a bit grumpy and a bit hmmmph. And I don't feel like actually doing anything apart from cruising trashy webstuff, but I always feel a bit yuck after doing that too. Maybe I'll go and eat. Actually I've got to pick Moo up in 20 mins so no point doing anything.
Crikey what a sad sack I am!

Just thought I'd post this to show there are lots of blah moments doing this as well as fabulous ones.

Those of you who know me...

...will know that I'm almost crippled by seeing sad or embarrassing things happen to people, and as you'll know, they stay with me, well for a very, very long time. Usually they're in situations when I'm unable to do anything, and the best thing would be to ignore them/forget about it.

For example, once in Dunedin when I was in my very late teens, I saw a blind man trying to cross a busy street and got stuck in the middle of the road. I was in a bus at the time and no doubt someone would have helped him, but I didn't see it, I only saw him and his cane and the busy traffic......sigh

And the other time, when I was on a bus on my way to work and I saw a man (who I'd seen a few times and I knew was a sort of street person) walk past a sign that must have had an edge jutting out but it ripped his shirt completely (and no doubt his arm) so his shirt just flapped down. He looked like he was in a hurry (maybe to a new job?) and now what was he going to wear (and it looked like a new shirt) - see what I mean....

Well last night, I was out for dinner with the lovely Caroline, who is maybe going to help with a bit of the business stuff, we were sitting amongst other valentine day diners when suddenly there was a massive downpour. And we watched as a middle age couple ran across the road and the man completely fell over in a puddle and lost his glasses and then knelt there not moving, getting wetter. Noone knew what to do (as his wife was there with him) and a few people stood up as if to go and help. The man eventually got up and moved on. We thought the best thing to do was not to stare and worsen his humiliation. But still - I'll add that to my sad story portfolio....

Actually I know this fact about me really annoys the crap out of my friend KT - just pre-empting any comments from you KT!!!

Closing and Other Problems

Friday is my day for phone calls to charities and work stuff. I am becoming a little bit excellent at making the initial charity contacts, talking the talk and then getting off the phone with promises of sending templates, brand examples, documents etc. But it's the next step I really, really struggle with. The followup call when I am asking them to committ to something or do something. In other words, when I'm trying to close on the "deal". I try and avoid saying "look, if it's not something you're interested in, that's cool", as it's definitely not cool. This beast will not live unless I have lots of charities with me. And that means I gotta get good at the closing. Actually I've got to get good at making the call to initiate the closing, as more often than not I have a zillion reasons to avoid making a call.

Just like I'm doing right now.

Just got off the phone from a call-before-the-closing-call, and some really interesting, valid and potentially scary road block issues were raised. I was savvy enough not to panic and instead offered a "hmmm, you've raised a really interesting, valid point there, let me get back to you on that...."

Time to panic a smidge...and make some more calls!

Ants in the letterbox

So ants rate up there as vermin I hate - nothing worse than opening your pantry door and seeing a sea of black, then feeling tempted to spray wildly but realising that it's food your spraying - which ends up having to be binned anyway.

I get the occasional ant in my letter box, I've even had a snail attached to my very, very important trademark approval letter (and the snail had eaten a good chunk of my letter too - I'm too grossed out to actually file it now). Actually snails rate third in my Most Hated Wildlife list behind maggots #1, and cockroaches #2, but then if you've read my earlier posts you'd know why.

Yesterday I went to get the mail, and there was an ant "swarm" in my letterbox - totally, totally gross. Of course I emptied a tin of flyspray into it, and the problem was quickly sorted. Or was it? I now have a letterbox fill and covered in dead ants. I can't wash it out coz the insides of letterboxes never see any sunshine to dry, the vacuum cord won't reach so that won't work. And it looks revolting - I'm sure our postie will be talking in the smoko room about "..that gross letterbox covered in dead ants, and why didn't that dizzy woman just let the ants eat whatever they were eating and then move on, instead of emptying a tin of spray on them?"

Suggestions or commiserations appreciated

But Before I Get Back Into It

...in a fever pitch to reduce costs against my non-existent income, I have cut back my cleaner from weekly to fortnightly. I'm extremely lucky and grateful to have one at all, and needed one on a weekly basis for a bit as I had worked out that there was a direct correlation between clean house/happy me. Thankfully I'm not in that space anymore, and figured a bit of mess and grime never did anyone any harm.

Problem is I have 4 boys in the family who use the toilet- one still in nappies, one very adept at using the loo coz he's been doing it for almost 40 years and two beginners. So after a week, my toilets smell like old mens toilets with lots of leakage and mishaps.

I'm seriously considering teaching them to sit down.

For any "old men" out there, this is not intended as an insult, just a totally gross generalisation.

Smith is yelling out at me, so looks like that's it for me until tonight. He is so cute now that he is a big boy of two. I said to him today "I love you Smith" and he said..."I love you Mum" . Nice.

Very small, overpriced but eco-footprint friendly babydoll that he got for his birthday from e-bay was promptly ignored until getting a dunking in the old-man-smelly loo last night. Poor bubba.

Writing Stuff and Talking to Folks

I'm in a frenzy of writing copy and calling charities, neither of which is as fun as checking www.TMZ.com which sometimes I do instead of writing copy and calling charities. Calling the charities is a bit like being a saleperson or an actor or both, and I'm incredibly nervous and have even been known to actually say "gobbledy gook" on these calls sometimes (is that still an actual word or was it withdrawn in like 1973). I thought I'd be uber organised and wrote myself a "script" ie what to say. I was 20 seconds into my first call using my "script" when it turned to custard, I ditched the script and went into schoomze overtime trying to salvage the call.

And as for the copy, my web developers tell me to cut and past out of other websites which simply feels wrong, I don't know how to deal with the copyright issue and also comes across sounding very awkward. For example...." Each individual who establishes a giving programme is making a farreaching contribution to improve the human condition, so it's a totally cool thing to do and you'll feel awesome if you do it...." See what I mean?

So I write everything from scratch, which means I actually have to upskill and form an opinion on everything. Today I think I have overpromised, and will be in overdrive for the next few days until it becomes apparent I am underdelivering...again.

And The Husband gave me that spend-less-time-on-your-blog-and-more-on-the-business look the other day. Hmm, I never thought he read it.

Hello Husband :)

Bad Aunt Story

Because I adore and dote on my sister's kids, I just assumed she'd feel the same about mine. But APPARENTLY my sister has a "runny bottom' (her words not mine), and is not able to leave home in the likely event of a major runny poo incident, and therefore has been unable to post Smith's birthday pressie.
As it's only his 2nd birthday, Sister, I call that a 50% hit rate of getting it right. I suggested that in the likely event of a poo seepage while going to the Post Office, she could create a large 'poo pad" modelled roughly out of half a roll of loo paper . I've known this to be extremely effective for both the "shart" and explosive varieties of runny bottoms.

I think my angst is driven more on the hope that maybe Smith might have got more for his birthday than some very ordinary leftover toys, some smelly second hand books and a suprisingly small baby doll purchased on e-bay, from his Mum and Dad.

Oh, and I've just TEMPORARILY broken my compacting project - an unexpected birthday party invite this weekend for a little girl and I've used all my stand by pressies on Smith. I think that birthday presents were ok to buy (although one clever mum had given a kid a gift of some left over plywood and a half tube of glue), maybe I should rifle through my cupboards with a bit more imagination.

Big BIG storm here, Rafe sitting quietly with Flore in his normal terrified state.

Success is.....

...that my almost two year old, when he hears the first rumbles of thunder, yells out loudly...."storm's coming"

Actually it's more like "Norm numbing".

There's a norm numbing now. Got to love Sydney.

Work Stuff

I haven't really been chatting much about what I've been doing with the business - I'm kind of in a space where I am trying to do exactly what my project manager asks of me, which has involved calling charities, filling in templates and getting moving again on the copy. It's taking a lot longer than she thought, but I'm not that suprised, I simply haven't got as many "working" hours - ie productive time where I can produce good stuff, as I need. And so it will be.

We will get there.

We have to because we've already paid for it. I'm just at the start of the slog, and really need to knuckle down and do some stuff. It may be a tad boring so I won't labour on too much in my blog. Just so you know that behind all the chit chatty stuff, I'm actually still "working" in my own way. Exciting stuff is though that my website is starting to look good, I've had awesome responses from the few charities I've started to deal with. I've asked my wonderful friend Caroline for some help on a piece of the website, although the pay is shite (ie non-existant). And lovely Flora is on her second day working for me, and we might try and make it work.

In saying that I took an evening off last night and went to my friend Cindy's house for a chick flick - she had popcorn, tissues, licorice allsorts (which I love almost as much as jersey caramels) and lots of pillows, blankets and sauvignon blanc - the perfect combination for a rainy night in. Now that's more fun than writing copy.

My Friend KT

..is going to run and cycle from one side of New Zealand to the other this Friday in an iconic iron man'y kind of event called the Coast-to-Coast. She's amazing! She's fit, headstrong and tenacious and has been training for this since she got back from climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in October. She's a mum of two little guys, a hugely successful career woman, and is my oldest friend. We're going to flat together when we're both 108 and if both our husbands have died.

And she's running for about 5 or 6 hours across rocks, rivers, boulders, and mountains this Friday. What are you doing on Friday?

I'm very proud of her. Can you tell?

Compacting

I was invited to an evening last week to join a compacting group for the month of February. The women I met were lovely and the night really enjoyable - especially the ham and mustard sandwiches which I wolfed down. So compacting is all about reducing your environmental footprint, not buying new stuff, recycling, borrowing, bartering, only buying locally made, in season stuff and basically being really committed to reducing the impact you have on the environment.

The women I met were focused, committed and into it. Me, I was probably at the lower end of this scale. I can imagine doing without for a month - the bank account will love it, although maybe not in March. So I'm not buying anything new, I'm trying to give away stuff to others especially my old baby gear, but the reality for me is that apart from not shopping, not buying the occasional trashy mag, and buying my fruit in season, it's not much different from what I'd normally do.

Although Smith's birthday this month is proving problematic - I had some leftover pressies from the gift cupboard for him, I've brought him a pre-loved book on e-bay, and am about to buy him a babydoll on e-bay - it's new but was a surplus gift so it's not making more waste. I'm feeling quite good about this, and when I saw our bank account still isn't much healthier, I know it's not just cause of me, as it normally is.

So Sally, just wondering if your man is getting his coffees in his own mug rather than a takeout cup each day? I suggested it to The Husband. And actually The Husband is a better compacter than me, in fact his suggestion for Smith's birthday was "look at all this other crap we have, he doesn't need anything" - I haven't told him about the babydoll yet. And that's not because of compacting.

So although we're keen on the idea, when the rubber hits the road, we're at the less committed end of the spectrum, The Husband still gets his takeout coffee each day and I'm still looking for that perfect shirt dress, although if I find one, I may ask them to put it aside....until March.

Hi out there....

For a long while I thought it was only my bunch of friends reading this blog as a way of seeing what's been going on in my life, since you never hear much from me, and as I always seem to get myself in a pickle. But apparently not, as I got a lovely and um, helpful offer from a very nice bloke somewhere out there, regarding the dodgey babysitter. If you're reading this, then...thanks for your offer and support but I think I'll pass. I'm almost over the incident - the rant did help, and like I said Rafe sticks alot closer to me now as a result...and as you can see I didn't post your comment, although I was sorely tempted as I do love to get comments - remember you are all in my "office" and one sided conversations aren't as fun.

Anyhow, to all those people who may be reading about me and who I haven't met yet, then hi and welcome. Just no guns please.