where is auto save when you need it….

I just completed a post on my recent visitors and when I hit publish it asked me if I was sure I wanted to do this and I said yes and then my post dissappeared…no draft, nothing, just a blank page for me to start all over again. awesome. what I had written wont seem nearly as entertaining to me second time around so I will have to come up with something else.

so yesterday I said farewell to my cousin, who is more like my sister, and her lovely daughter. I don’t think it has ever bothered me as much, being so far away from family, as it has now. we have lived in western australia since 1988 and the rest of our rellies are spread out all over Australia the UK and USA. I grew up knowing my cousins and spending time with them but for little K Dogg this looks to be impossible. she will know who everyone in the family is but the logistics of actually getting together just make it too hard – thankfully we can use skype to keep in touch with my brother and his family and I still hold out for that lotto win but in the mean time once I return to work we will start to save some moolah to be able to travel.

I am so grateful that my cous and her girl were able to come and spend some time hanging out with the B Badgers and K Dogg and now that they have returned to the other side of the country I have a new lease on life. I had started to get into a bit of a daily routine that involved not much other than caring for K Dogg and waiting for Mr B Badger.com to come home. having “the dynamo” come to stay was great and if Mr B Badger.com thinks I struggle to sit down and relax he has just witnessed what it is like ten fold. my cous is a force to be reckoned with…washing, ironing, cleaning, cooking, playing with K Dogg, throwing the ball to Mr Rooben, more washing, more cleaning, more more more…I would say she will need a holiday from her holiday but I know her well enough to know that things are no different at her place. other than she has a bigger clothesline….she took one look at my Mrs Peggs collapsible number and laughed. but as I explained to her if you have a bigger line then you are tempted to do more washing cause you have more space to hang it on. with the old Mrs Peggs you can only do a couple of loads before she’s full and then you have to wait til it’s all dry, perfect. and if she was tempted to use the dryer while she was here she needed a step to get up close to it cause it was put on the wall by a giant…failing to find a step she used a stack of books, ironically one of which is The Toyota Way which is about improving process’ to make work more efficient – well done.

anyhoo so now that the house has returned to just the four of us I have come up with a schedule that involves walking, household chores, study time and weight training to keep my days nice and full. I have to exercise, it keeps me sane. I should get a tee-shirt printed with “exercise to exorcise”. I have to prioritize things the right way for me and unfortunately that may upset some people but I don’t want to be that person who regrets not taking time for themselves and just doing what others expected of them. I am certain this will affect some people as our lives have changed substantially in the past four months and we have K Dogg to think about now. so that we can still be around to see her into her forties we are going to have to be a bit selfish and spend time making sure we are as fit and healthy as we can be. this started today for me as I set out on a walk that ended with me soaked to the skin and K Dogg dry as a bone and sound asleep in her pram. I hadn’t planned on jogging just yet but started doing some interval training closely followed by a sprint home – not easy while pushing a pram that is also being pushed by a headwind. tomorrow will be upper body weights…it’s been a while so I hope I can remember to take it easy…