byCarmine

After his sleep.. well, about an hour after his sleep my son returned, full of BIG hugs and wanting to play squeak squeak (this is a game he devised which basically like tag, but on fours crawling around the house going squeak-squeak) with me. He always wins. He’s much better at crawling than me! And surprisingly fast.

Ewan’s a cute kid. All those  blonde curls and those catchy and humerous phrases that he comes up with that make their way even into my every day speech are hard not to adore. Some of my favourites: “‘I find you”, “Thank you much”, “Cat? Cat? Where are you? Are you hiding up or are you down?” He’s sweet. He’s polite. Lots of pleases, thank-yous, excuse me, you’re welcome, or you’re very welcome! He loves hugs and often randomly comes up to me and says ‘biiiiiig hug!’ I have Teletubbies to thank for that one. He comes up neat terminology for things. Leaves are ‘tree stars’ (Land Before Time). Cats are ‘Meow-meows’. Light bulbs are stars. Toast is ‘Tubbie-toast’. Every day with him is a delight.

Every now and then though he has a ‘toddler’ day, where my usually good boy is  possessed by the mind of a normal two year old. Today was one of those days. It was also a day that I ludicrously decided to go shopping. With my Mum. Yeah I know, not the smartest thing. I normally don’t like shopping at the best of times. I’d just rather do it online. Do a search, compare prices and hit the buy button with credit card in hand. I can better keep track of my finances that way. My Mum is the sort that has to look at everything in the shop. Three times. So, when she was buying jeans, she had to try them all on. Then again to make sure. Then she spotted another rack. And she had to try those ones on… then the original ones to compare.

Meanwhile…. Ewan was tired, hungry and really acting up. I was attempting to get him into line and I’d turn my back to find her bribing him with chocolate, biscuits and soda to get him to be good. The latter of which he dropped on the floor of the store. I looked at it, looked around… no one had seen.. and quickly escorted Ewan from it. So, it was hard to compete with him being rewarded for being naughty.. and I had a lot of other Mum”s out and about giving me a sympathetic look as Ewan lay down in the middle of the walk way and refused to move. Thankfully, he wasn’t screaming.

I was also after a couple of pairs of jeans and managed to get that sorted in the first twenty minutes there. And yet, we were there almost 3 hours. And it felt like 6.  It felt like I was out with two terror-toddles, not one.

Thankfully, when I got home Ewan blessed me with a rare day-time sleep. He’s the only kid in his creche at the moment who rarely sleeps during the day. Maybe.. one day a week. I don’t think it’s his fault.. another issue with my Mum. It’s hard for him to sleep when she gets him all hypo when I put him down.

I’ve been a little bit of a hermit for the last few weeks. Those from Dark Isles would of noticed my absence from the game. And even when I am on, I’m not involved as such. We all (staff/players both) need breaks sometimes and my last one was over a year ago I think.. so  I know I’m due one.

But it isn’t just Dark Isles, I’ve been reclusive in other areas too. But that is normal for me, periodically.

Usually there’s always a reason why, and once I get my head around it and feel better about myself and/or the situation, then I come back into the social scene.

So, what’s been going on in my life? I had a birthday on the 19th. My boyfriend forgot/did nothing/said nothing. I wonder if I will ever have a partner who will actually acknowledge it, much less treat it as a moderately special occasion. I graduated on the 3rd of May. The ceremony was neat. I thought we were going out for dinner afterwards. Most of my friends did with their families. Instead, we had sandwiches at home. So that side was a little disappointing. I think I mentioned previously that I have a job now. So have withdrawn out of University (not completing honours) and have started freelancing remotely, and moving to Sydney late August. It’s not soon enough though. Excited, nervous and all that jazz.

Tonight, I decided to cuddle with Ewan when I put him to bed. It had been a bit of a rough night and he had been playing up a bit. And I just wanted to cuddle with him a little. Of course, according to my Mum, this is a crime. She came in,  and started ranting. I got up, not wanting Ewan to hear it, and she just kept going.

Apparently, I’m jealous of her and Ewan and am trying to ‘upstage’ her. And because I shoo’d her out of the bedroom at night time earlier this week (he was having a tantrum and I really didn’t want her to play into it and give it attention), she said there’s two rules one for her and one for me. I said they were different circumstances. She argued what gives me the right to decide the rules. And replied that I’m his Mum. And she said that she does more for Ewan than I do, and that I’m a crap Mum.

No matter how many times she says it, no matter how much I deny it, it hurts so much.

My soon to be home.

Thursday had me going over and over and rethinking the whole honours thing at University. I was seriously considering either quitting or toning it down. Thursday evening I get a phone call and a job offer. For a web development position in Sydney. Remote work to begin immediately with the idea to move over in July/August. Too good to turn down. So I didn’t turn it down. I’m still waiting on the actually salary rate.. but it should be reasonable. Basically the lady I did the freelance work for loved it so much, that she would like to take me on. Initially a three month contract with the option to continue after that. And even if it doesn’t work out, Sydney has a lot of web development opportunities.

Excited. Scared. Freaked out. Eager.

It’ll solve a lot of problems. It will be just me and Ewan going. Staying with my brother initially for a couple of weeks till we find our own place.

So yeah, I will be withdrawing from Honours. Still graduating (May 3rd). I can take it up again later most likely.

The lack of both presence on the mud, and updates is probably a good hint that things have been pretty crazy for me lately. Super busy. Sick with Laryngitis. A lot of work on. Emotional rollar-coaster. And trying to get my head around another of my hobbies that has re-established itself. I’m not yet completely comfortable with it. But I won’t get into that here, probably not the place to.

The laryngitis has been … interesting. I lost my voice completely for a few days. And that was difficult, especially when it came to looking after Ewan. He kept telling me to ‘turn it up’, or kissing my throat and declaring ‘aaaaallll better!’. Lots of cute little moments.

This is the site I have been working on: http://www.chriscourt.com/dev/zenphoto/

Though it is less, for me, about the design, and more about the back end, making a custom CMS to allow the client to update and manage the photographs. Getting it to look just right and match the graphic designers specifications. So.. it was kind of like.. font a little bigger.. smaller, thinner, move it up.. no down.. It was a bit of a learning process and required a lot of patience.

As a result of all of the above, I’m way, way behind on my assignments. I have two majors due on my birthday. Yay. But I managed to get a med certificate for extensions for both for another few days. I haven’t started on either. The Parallel Programming one (map reduce) needs to be done on the uni computers and I haven’t been able to go in. Tomorrow though I hope to get started on that.

The other is a information visualisation one. Less worried about that one. Confident I can come up with something. Haven’t heard yet about my extension request.

Most of you probably know that I’ve got a sexy new laptop. It’s red. And one of the best things about it is the RGB LED screen. It makes everything look good. The colours are so intense, I had to turn down the ANSI settings on Mushclient. It can run games with ease. And by ease I mean turning all the settings at max, and not having any problems. No overheating, no stalling. Just.. beautiful. Back lit keyboard. 1 GB graphics card. 600 GB Hard drive. You get the picture, it really is about as sexy as a gadget can get.