Sun befuddled ramblings

Its been amazing weather lately. After the summer without sun and without drought, we now have the autumn with both sun and drought. The garden is bolting along due to me putting water on it, while the lawn is starting to burn off. They call it global weirding.

At lunch I sat outside, in the sun, alone. The others sat inside and talked to each other about impressively mindless things. I like to sit and chat most times, but I often go back to the class room more peopled out than I was at the start of break. I sat outside and soaked up the sunshine, and relaxed into the quiet. And went back to class, ready for the noise.

In fact, class was quiet last thing, as I tried to explain linkage to tired and heat befuddled year 13's. I'm not sure any of us made much progress. At least there is no school tomorrow, so we have a day to find and engage our brains. Then a two day teaching patch, 2 day weekend, 5 day teach, 3 day weekend. Its a strange term...

Oh, and today the exband got his payout, and I got a mortgage.

End of a good thing

Tomorrow it's back to earning my living, and the boys go back to school too. Its been a great holiday, I think in part because we had no great ambitions to achieve anything. We did do a few things - the vege garden has several new plants, and less weeds, the house got cleaned, we visited some people and made lots of extremely good food. But it all just flowed along rather than being strained over. That's what we will miss when school starts - its all stress and deadlines. Dead lines.
As of tuesday I will be a separated woman - he will have his payment, and I will be sole owner of the house. I will also have a mortgage - did you know that translates to death grip??!! Lovely.
One of the things I finished in the holiday was son #2's blanky. It is a length of material, cut in half and sewn together to make a large rectangle. Then pinned to a polar fleece blanket , stippled and bound.

Cheap blanket - $20 - cheaper than batting

I discovered the power of the blue tape.
Works better than white or green!

The whole room was full of blanky

Used Leah's tip on zig zagging the binding
GOOD TIP.

One very happy customer - the best kind!

I should note the blanky goes round him twice in this photo. I only stopped stippling when thread ran out, and the size is pretty consistent, and LARGE. I have several new skills thanks to Leah.

So now I have to bind the asian fabric quilt and the holiday projects are finished. FINISHED.

The third day

It's the third day  of my holiday, and also the third day of Easter. We went to Mass tonight. Son#2 has to sit with us now and stay out of the crying room. He doesn't cry in there - it sounds like he is organising the super bowl though! yelling and banging.

The exband bought son#2 a length of fabric printed with sharks. I don't mind that part, but it seems it is my job to turn the fabric into something he can use. Which as I have a 'to do' list longer than I can actually recite I find his attitude ... annoying! He must think I don't have anything much to do with a full time job and full custody!!! But onwards.

I am pinning the fabric to polar fleece and turning a boring blue blanket into an exciting quilt. And I get to stipple the whole thing if I want to so should have big scale stippling sorted out by the end! Pinning it is really hard. The pins don't go through easily. Either the fabric is very high density - it sure looks tough - or pinning through polar fleece on an angle is hard because of all the threads. Dunno, but my fingers sure hurt.

Cleaned up the back yard today - swept, trimmed and weeded. Looks fantastic. Checked when to move the rhubarb and its June/July, so its a long wait to finish the final garden off. Ate first feijoa yesterday - feel so clever eating fruit out of the back yard.

Six days

The alternative title for this was "I'm a single lady, I'm a single lady", as tomorrow I go to the lawyers after work and sign the separation agreement between the exband and I. I sent this agreement last year to him, after we agreed to it verbally, and it has taken a WHOLE YEAR for him to sign it. He has been through three lawyers and cost me quite a bit of money getting to this point. I'm gonna feel so relieved (and a little sad) to finally sign.

Onto other news, its six teaching days to the first holiday of the year. We aren't going anywhere much - I offered to take the boys up to see their father, but he said not to bother (!) so we are staying home. It will be good to chillax at home. And maybe catch up on keeping the place clean and tidy.

Quilt wise, I managed to buy the batting and backing for the Japanese print quilt and have started quilting it. The first material I looked at was $80 for 2m, but I found something cheaper (tea dyed muslin), then the first batting was going to be $70, but I got that down too, and the total for the cheaper versions of BOTH was $60. I'm going to be making a few shopping decisions like that over the next little while. Once I have done this one, I will make Hami's blanky which I don't have to buy anything for.

I'm gonna learn to quilt on the cheap!

Living the high life

When the exband and I separated, he decided to go and live with his parents a six or so hour drive away from here. At the time I felt a great deal of relief as I didn't have to deal with him except over the phone. So no fraught child exchanges on the weekend. I had my boys all to myself, and I liked that.

Today my boys went down to their friends, and when I went down there to ask if they could stay while I got the groceries, their mum said "Have a coffee as well", and I did. I very rarely get a break away from either work or the kids, and most times I don't mind. I do go to dancing while they have a baby sitter, but I am rushing home to save a buck then. Today there was no need to rush. I sat in a cafe and read a design magazine for a while, and then had a look at what was in the garden centre.

It felt absolutely grand.

So now I can see that if the exband was a little closer, there would be an upside. But you know, when I think about it, I wouldn't change my situation at all. Except for an hour off every now and again, when I don't have to rush. I'm sure that must be possible!

The calming influence of vampyres

Had a very annoying conversation with my exband who is on medication for his mental health issues. His version of reality and mine are not the same, which makes signing a separation agreement very hard. Or at least, he has not been able to sign the one he was sent, I've spent about $1500 in the past year doing stuff for the lawyer he has now fired (and described as unhelpful), and now he wants to sign the original agreement. Which means the past year has achieved absolutely nothing.

So my head was blah-ing on about all this crap (above is a very brief summary) all day Saturday. When I saw a box set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I knew what to do! After several episodes, I am once again grateful that I don't have him in my life on a day to day basis. I have a happy life now, and I know it.

Also there is less wallpaper in my bedroom, cos I have stripped two walls. That was therapeutic too.