Laura read my blog today and tells me I'm very boring!! Love you too sweetie!!
My new little car is still very excellent and a pleasure to drive. It had it's 1000km service today and I drove the station wagon instead today - totally different.
Neale loves the Mazda too - so much so that he had a day off work early last week and bought himself one too. Our station wagon was used as a trade in and it leaves us on Monday. Neale bought a red car ( he tells me red cars go faster!) and his car has the manual transmission, whereas mine is automatic. On Saturday, I'm planning on cleaning out the old car, before it's handed into the car yard - it's a bit of a tip!
Laura has now graduated from high school. I can't believe that my last baby has finished her secondary schooling. Where did that time go?
She was having trouble finding a dress and two weeks before, I stupidly offered to make her a dress to wear to the graduation dinner. We got the material - a cranberry charmeuse with black chantilly lace to be overlaid on top, chose the pattern - McCalls M6698. I traced off the pattern started altering lots of cutting and slashing and spreading. Several more tracings, toiles, lots of tears (mine), fittings and even more tears of frustration, I started warning her to go dress shopping and fast!
I'd begun questioning my ability and skills and got myself pretty worked up that I just couldn't get the bodice to fit straight away. I'm now determined to get it sorted out - mainly because I need to make the same adjustments to patterns to fit me. I'm just a couple of sizes bigger than Laura though. She's also taller than me - yep, I'm the shortest in the family at 163cm - so unfair (I blame my parents! I'm also the shortest out of my 2 brothers and 2 sisters. not cool!)
She ended up finding a dress on an Ebay site in England and we hoped that it would arrive in time - it did and I think it fitted her perfectly. I'm still determined to finish her dress - but it might very well be in time for her University graduation now!!!
She had her hair done and re-dyed black - I was really hoping she'd go back to her blonde hair, but no. She decided to go sans glasses to the dinner - and had trouble seeing. thankfully, Laura didn't break her neck as she walked across the stage when she was awarded her Year 12 certificate!
Laura's now waiting for her Year 12 results which are published in a couple of weeks. She's applied to University and has received letters from both universities offering her a place in the first round of offers - provided she passes the English examination. The course she's wanting to do is game design which is only offered in Melbourne at RMIT - eekk! I'd really prefer her to stay local and study art at Federation Uni and build on her art skills first before going to Melbourne.
We had a good time at the graduation dinner, which was last Tuesday night - until Thursday. Laura was up through the night vomiting and Neale had to cancel and interview in Melbourne that she was to attend. At lunchtime Thursday, I became ill. Definitely not fun at all - turns out it was food poisoning and more than 40 people were struck down. The local Health Dept. are investigating as they had received many more reports after the event. Not a fun time.
I missed my brother and sister in law's joint 40th Birthday celebration on Friday night. Was so looking forward to that and catching up with all my brothers and sisters, but just wasn't well enough to attend. I'm still peeved that it took me 4 days to recover fully - Laura was sick only for the the 1 day. Neale told me it was because I was older than her. Not a pleasant experience at all.
Work is incredibly busy and going to become more so. There are four of us in the office, our Manager, Steve, two contract managers and I'm the administration manager. Denise the senior contract manager is scheduled to have surgery on Monday and unlikely to return until after Christmas and Nathan, our other contract manager is supposed to take 3 weeks leave straight after Christmas. Our Melbourne office now tells us that we will not be getting any help to cover Denise and Nathan whilst they are off - Denise is also taking 3 months long service leave from February and no cover is to be provided for her absence either. Lots of work is scheduled for January - that needs to be done. Pretty sure that many of my cleaners will make themselves unavailable too - curses!
I tried telling Steve the other day that I needed all of January off (jokingly) and he told me I could request it - but it wasn't going to happen!!!!
2015 - I'm taking January off for sure!!!! (mind you, I've threatened that every January since 2009!)
Christmas is fast approaching and I'm so not prepared and organised. Several more presents to buy and wrap. We are having the McDougall family Christmas dinner (my family) at a restaurant in Traralgon on the 15/12/2013. One of my sisters and her family won't be attending - as they are holidaying in Queensland and won't be back until a couple of days before Christmas. Hopefully I'll be able to catch up with her after Christmas sometime.
I've got to clean up the house - psyching myself up to do that! I keep offering my house as for the cleaners from work to practice on - but no takers yet!!
Jenny
