Baby, I can drive my car.

Finally, I passed my driving test today. It's been an interesting experience overall, doing all the lessons and practice and learning, but I'm so glad that I don't have to do another driving lesson.
It has been raining on and off since Wednesday and it poured last night so I was a bit concerned about the wet roads, but in the end, it was okay. There weren't many other people on the road, which I think was a factor of the 8.45am timeframe and the wet weather. It didn't even rain all that hard.
I only got one non-critical error, when for some unknown reason I slowed down to stop at a green traffic light!
Disappointingly, they only do tests on the weekends and don't issue licences so I won't actually be able to drive on my own until I can get my licence from a Queensland Transport office during the week.
But....it's a great result and I'm very happy. I'm tired though, and I can't wait to do as much nothing as possible tomorrow.

First, when there's nothing but a slow, glowing dream.

I overstretched at my jazz class last week and had trouble even walking normally right up until Sunday. I took it a lot easier last night and so far I've only had a few twinges. My dance teacher Wendy said that they'd broken me in last week and that this week would be better. So far so good.

I enjoyed the jazz classes so much that I wanted to do more dancing. So I'm going to start ballet tomorrow night. I'm a bit nervous but I'm looking forward to it.

Work has been a bit of a nightmare lately and I'm in one of those periods where it seems really hard to please any of our customers. Still, my team seem to be happy and I'm really proud of the work they're doing. But I'm still feeling like I'm a real bottleneck and I can't get on top of the mountain of work in front of me.

I've been knitting in every spare moment and in less than a week I've got the bottom 20cm done of a jumper for me. I'm knitting it in the round so the front and back get done together. Between that and the dance classes I'm chilling out reasonably well out of work hours. Oh, except for the driving lessons, which despite getting easier still throw tiny moments of terror into my weekends. I drove at 100km/hr on the freeway last weekend for the first time ever and even successfully managed a lane-change (although I did inadvertantly slow down significantly during the manoeuvre...Thanks to the lovely lady behind me for slowing down too!). My instructor is talking about booking the test soon and I have a 2hr lesson on Sunday to spend a lot of time around the testing area....It's getting to the pointy end of the process and I'm nervous.... I've just got to keep thinking how good it's going to feel to put those P plates on my little purple car. :)

Happy Feet, but an intensely unhappy back.

I've been wanting to go back to dance classes for a long time. I haven't taken a real class (I'm not counting the exercise-driven ones at the gym) since high school but I dance in my head much every time I hear a piece of music, and I'm always glued to shows like So You Think You Can Dance.

I finally took the plunge this year, after figuring out that there was a dance school at the top of our street, and when they didn't answer emails or phonecalls, that there was another one which ran classes in a church hall less than 10min walk away.

I made my enquiries, established that there was an adult jazz class on Tuesday nights, and that all ages and abilities were catered for.....

Then on Sunday I made the trip to Bloch in Fortitude Valley where I became the proud owner of my very own pair of leather, split-sole jazz shoes. I got gym wear as well, but that's a sore point because most of their clothes didn't fit me. I think for most of the pants I was looking at, I was really an extra large, and they only stocked up to Large.

(On that point, I can highly recommend Lorna Jane for gym-wear. They are very expensive but have a great range of really good quality gym-wear that fitted well and didn't make me feel fat and lumpy the way other brands have in the past. The sales assistants were friendly and helpful and best of all, in their sizing, I am a medium.!!!)

Class tonight was great. A lot of it came back to me, (although a lot of it didn't) and I even got the leaps right. I had a little bit of trouble with the routine to start off with, but had it at the end, and managed to mostly keep up with all the other students who had started learning this routine last week. It was a good workout, but not so good that I couldn't keep up, and the stretching will do me good. At least I hope it will do me good sometime later, because at the moment my back and legs are in a world of pain. My hamstrings are going to hate me in the morning.

If I recover from the pain, I might think about taking on a Ballet class....now that would be funny.

Happy Australia Day

We made our way to Southbank parklands today to take in the Australia Day atmosphere. The Man and I claimed our favourite spot on Southbank beach with our Australian flag towel and settled back with the newspaper and the Boy ensconced himself in the water, where he happily played for the next 4 hours. The weather was almost perfect - warm enough for the Boy to be comfortable swimming all morning, not too hot for the land-lubbers and the occasionally threatening clouds only dropped a few sprinkles!





Tomorrow is a big day in households all over Queensland and this one is no exception. Our little boy is not quite so little anymore and he will be starting school tomorrow. First day of school, wow. The Man and I are very much more nervous than the Boy, and we have taken the day off work to be there when he goes into the classroom and when he comes out. Hopefully the latter will not be immediately after the former! Photos of the little munchkin in his all-maroon uniform tomorrow!

On the knitting front, I was hoping to have my short-sleeved cardigan finished for the big event tomorrow, but the constant errors (all my own fault, unfortunately) and design-alteration decisions have meant that there's still one row of knitting, an awful lot of seaming, and 80cm of i-cord to go. Not going to happen. Oh well.

I don't really like the way this cardi turned out but I've fallen seriously in love with the Rowan Cashsoft DK I used for the edgings and I'm wondering how I can justify spending the money it will cost to buy enough of it to knit a whole jumper. Hmmmm. Maybe I can call it "helping out a friend"..... My friend D's hubby is the local rep for Rowan yarns. Yep, that's it, I'm not spending $155 plus shipping on a jumper, I'm helping out a friend. Sounds much better that way, right?

Good luck to everyone who's starting school and everyone who has a little person in their household starting school this week. We're happy and sad and excited and nervous and encouraging and concerned all at the same time. Hope it works out well for all of us. Somehow I think the kids are having an easier time than us grown-ups!

What do you mean, it's January already?

I remember my Mum and Dad telling me that when I got older, the years would go really quickly. Well, I think I must be getting older. So many people around me have been saying this that it's become a bit of a cliche, but I really can't believe it's January already.

The Boy starts school in a couple of weeks time. We have his cute little maroon uniform (just thinking about anyone being dressed head to toe in maroon is giving me hives but I guess I have to get used to being a Queenslander some time) and we know his teacher's name and it's all happening whether we like it or not. We got very excited yesterday about the fact that we have been allocated all 5 days before and after school care, as we'd previously been told that Tuesdays might be booked out. It's not ideal to have him in care every morning and afternoon but we just couldn't manage it any other way with our full time work.

So we're on the school bandwagon well and truly. We like the cheaper fees and the fact that the school is just around the corner and the Boy should meet some local kids to play with and the fact that he's growing up and soaking up all kinds of amazing knowledge is pretty cool too. We don't like the cost of the uniform (have you seen the price of decent school shoes lately?), the idea of having to deal with school holidays and paying higher rates when we do go away. Still, you do what you have to do!

The Man got me three of the Stephanie Pearl-McPhee knitting books for Christmas and I finished the last one last night. Great fun and I'll be re-reading them. One has some patterns in it that I'd like to try so I'll be back to that one.

I keep meaning to get back onto Ravelry and update my projects and put up some photos. Maybe soon. I've nearly finished the Jo Sharp A-Line Jacket I've been making but I realised that the edging stitches I did in Cleckheaton Bamboo were a little tight and were exacerbating the rolling of the stocking stitch so I'm pulling them all out and redoing them with slightly larger needles. Then just the blocking and stitching together. I started a Booga Bag for my friend D on Sunday and I have another planned for another friend from work. I'll post photos when I get my knitting in the vicinity of a camera.

More big news, I've decided (again) that I'll get my drivers licence this year. Lulu (my car) has a new battery and is rearing to go, and I have lessons with a driving instructor booked for both Saturday and Sunday the weekend after next. P-plates here we come!.

Take me back to you, it's been a long time.....

If there's one thing that Jon Stevens does well, it's scream. If the Noiseworks concert a couple of weeks ago is anything to go by, Brisbanites the right side of thirty* are pretty good at screaming right back at him.

A couple of months ago, while listening to some old music late one night, The Man mentioned that he'd like to see some of the old bands live. I commented that at least one of them had to still be playing somewhere.... We happened to be listening to a Noiseworks song at the time so they were the first band I checked....Lo and behold, they were playing at the Tivoli on the 7th of November.

So we sent the Boy off to Grandma and Grandad's for the evening and toddled off to the Valley for a night out.

We installed ourselves about 10m from the stage and stayed put right through the opening acts - Move Trees, (who I quite liked - go to their MySpace page and listen to 'I found you') and Taxiride (who were okay - but the only songs I enjoyed were the ones they'd originally released as singles, the others were totally forgettable, and they seemed a little too self-interested to really be taken seriously).

And then the lights dimmed and the dulcet tones of "Touch" filled the hall. I have to admit I was doing a fair amount of the afore-mentioned screaming. Not the "aaah aaaaaaaaah Jon Stevens is soo sexy I want to have his babies aaaaaaah aaaaaaaaaah" type of screaming that seemed to be coming from all around us, emanating from women who really were old enough to know better, but the yelling out all the lyrics I could remember at the top of my lungs type of screaming.

We had a ball, right up until the strange jumpy woman to my left realised that she really couldn't do a proper job of groping her boyfriend with the one hand she had free and rectified this situation by flinging the empty beer bottle that was occupying her other hand onto my left foot.

A short walk, (or hobble) and the purchase of a Move Trees EP later we were in a taxi on the way..... home (we're getting too old for staying out that late) to drift off to sleep with No Lies playing over and over in our heads. Aah.

All together now... No lies, no lies, do it again.....

* the high side. Of course.

Wake me up when September ends

Okay - it's obviously not an entirely accurate metaphor, as September ended quite some time ago, but in the immortal words of Green Day .....

as my memory rests
but never forgets what I lost
wake me up when september ends

Four years on, this week still hit me like a freight train. Like all things, I know it will pass.

Still, it's a good time to take a moment to take stock. I am grateful for what I've learned, I am grateful that I got to spend part of my life with a person as amazing as Doug. I am grateful for my family and my friends. I am grateful for a workplace that (mostly) understands that I'm a bit of a crazy person this week. I am grateful for the wonderful man and beautiful, incredible (and occasionally exasperating) little boy I now have the opportunity to share my life with. I am reminded that out of tragedy has come new friends, new experiences and new love.

But wake me up next Tuesday, will you?