Already?

I thought that I was safe from this feeling for at least another nine or ten years. But no, it seems that I was wrong, and that heartache is mine already.

Last Sunday I went to the Sunday evening service at church. Now in the mornings Sweetpea goes to Sunday School and I go to the worship service, so the idea of having her sitting with me at the night service was one that I was actually looking forward to. All the way to church Sweetpea was chattering away in the back seat about how her Sunday school teacher is her best friend, and would she be there tonight? Obviously I had no idea and couldn’t answer her, so there was great rejoicing when she saw Rosita in the main hall before church started. There was numerous cuddles and telling Rosita what we had done during the day and then the question that felled me.

“Can I sit with you?”

Such an innocent question. I laughed, because I didn't really expect Sweetpea to want to sit with Rosita if I went to another area of the church to sit. I honestly thought that she would follow me (after a moment’s hesitation of course) and sit with me. I hate sitting in the crowded part of the church, I like to sit apart. Not because I don’t like people, but because I suffer dreadful claustrophobia and cannot stand the idea of being trapped. Heaven knows I've tried to sit with other people to try and make friends, but the panic rises in me in every growing waves and I cant breath, the world swims before my eyes and I end up biting my bottom lip until it bleeds in an effort to cope with my discomfort, and I hear absolutely nothing of the service. I thought that Sweetpea would follow me to the safety of my back row where I can escape if I need to and be happy. I was wrong. Sweetpea happily tripped after Rosita without giving me so much as a backward glance.

I spent the first ten minutes of the service feeling the hot salty sting in my eyes as I came to the realisation that my three and a half year old child would rather sit with her Sunday school teacher than me. That she is already exerting her independence. I felt ridiculous to be fighting back the tears... but there I was, none the less, begging God to stop me from crying, because I didn't want to make a scene or have anyone notice that I was crying. My biggest fear if someone had seen me cry was what would I say to their questioning? “My daughter *sniff* loves her Sunday school teacher *snuffle* more than me... boo-hoo-hooooooooooo!”? But I can’t tell you how it ripped my heart out to watch her talking with Rosita, swaying with the music and then cuddling into her during the sermon.

At one point Rosita sent Sweetpea to me and my heart soared to the heavens. Thoughts raced through my head as she ran along the back walkway to my open arms - she did love me, she missed me and wanted to sit with me after all. No. She needed to go to the toilet. And after taking her, she did not want to sit with me again. She sobbed when I tried to take her to my seat. Her little face scrunched up in a ball of grief and her eyes spilt tears of frustration. So with a heavy heart, I sent her off to go and sit with Rosita once again.

I have always known that one day she would spread her wings and fly. I've always known that if I do my job well, she will grow up confident in her abilities and want to fly the nest and it will be a sign of a job well done if she leaves me to go and forge relationships on her own terms. I just didn't expect it so soon.

Some Numbers

Zero- the enthusiasm I feel towards my university work this semester

One – the number of red tomatoes that have ripened on my plants that I have grown from seedlings this season (thank goodness there is a spate of warm weather this week or I will be forced to look up a recipe for fried green tomatoes)

Two- times I've baked chocolate cup cakes with milk chocolate ganache icing (once for the kids at kinder to celebrate Sweetpea's birthday and once for my disabled aunts 53 birthday a few days later)

Two- the number of books I've bought in the last two weeks on French cookery: two called “The Food of France”, but as Driving Miss Daisy says, they’re French; they don’t have to worry about originality!

Three – is how many years I have had the incredible joy, privilege and responsibility of my daughter life on this planet, which I celebrated on Wednesday 27th February

Five – the average number of hours of sleep I'm getting to enjoy on a regular basis, which isn’t enough by far, but is better than four

Seven – is (somewhat surprisingly) the number of years since I started my diary at Open Diary

Ten – days until I have to complete an assignment which I have barely started, don’t fully understand the question let alone the content and I have to work out how to upload via a Powerpoint presentation

Thirty-Five – the number of cupcakes I wish I had the room in my tummy to eat in one day

Thirty-Three – the number of minutes I got to talk to a friend whose husband has just gone on record in a very prominent newspaper and revealed private medical records about her leaving her feeling exposed, blind sided and betrayed

Thirty-Eight – the number of cupcakes I can get out of one batch of batter

Sixty- the number of photos that the Fisher-Price camera takes that I bought Sweetpea for her birthday present

100’s & 1000’s – the name of the colourful sprinkles that I put on the cupcakes for decoration

Infinity and Beyond – the joy I feel inside when I think about how much I love being Sweetpea's Mummah

In-Noo-Shook

I have to tell you that this studying stuff is for the birds… the birds I tell you! I am exhausted from spending three hours studying solidly today. I am currently doing a post- graduate course for professional development (meh), so I can wax lyrical all about gifted education and definitions and things that are factors in the fairness of training or the discrimination of not having specialist teachers for gifted students. Yes, I just knew that would prick your ears up and having you positively panting for more! For the first assignment (reports on the first five weeks worth of work) that is due in four weeks, there is the minimum of 3000 words for the whole five weeks. For week one I wrote 2600 words and I could have said much more, but I decided I had to stop and start week two. I don't think that I will have any trouble fulfilling the word count portion of this course. In fact, I'm finding it really interesting so far, but of course, by week 10 I could be bitching and whinging and you will be able to say “I told you so’s” all over the place. Just remind me that when I'm whinging that at the end of week 12 I have two assignments due, shut up and get on it with!

There. Does that count as a blog update? Because I truly cannot think of anything entertaining to write about.

Do I really want to write about how damn hard it was to leave Sweatpea with my friend Nurse today so that I could go out and study? Hell no. I want to forget that darling little face, screwed up in grief. I really don't want to write about the wails of “Mummah! Mummah! Mine!” that broke my heart and had me driving away in tears as I walked out the door and Nurse having to cuddle Sweatpea in her arms to stop her from running after me. I do not know how mothers can leave their children every day to go to work. I can only imagine how much of an emotional drain it must be to leave your child every day in the care of someone else if or when the maternal instincts are kicking and screaming madly to go back, wrap your arms around your baby and never walk away again. I'm not saying that there is anything bad with women who do it, either because they have to for economic reasons or they really, purely enjoy their jobs and want to keep their careers on the up and up. I just can’t imagine how you deal with the leaving of the child when they clearly don't want you to go away. I'm just really glad that I don't have to do it, and despite the financial hardships, despite my career being screwed around, I'm glad I get to spend the next few years with Sweatpea. And my respect for mothers who work outside of the home has grown. As I said, I'm thankful that I can be a stay at home mother for now. Having said all that, I'm also glad that I can study part time at university so that when I'm ready to go back to work, I will have better qualifications. Of course, by the time I finish my courses (at one subject a semester!) I could be too old and ready to go onto the old age pension making my studies worthless, but it keeps my brain active, or shattered depending on how much study I've done for the day! :)

Seriously, there was nothing exciting that happened today, but I have to get back into the habit of writing here rather than the paper diary that I've been working on. Actually, its part of my life coaches homework for me. I have to write ‘morning pages’ every morning (fancy that!) and I am finding that after writing them (by hand no less) I have pretty much purged out most of my thoughts and have nothing left to rant and rave about here in the online diary. Not that that’s a bad thing. I would love to have this diary filled with things that are lot more upbeat, positive and happy. The morning pages come from a workbook that I fear is going to take me positively years to work through called “The Artists Way” by Julia Cameron. Its supposed to be a book on how to reconnect with the inner artist we each have inside us. At least, that is what the book suggests. All I know is that I really struggle to call myself a writer, I don't believe that I have any talent whatsoever and I don't value the talent and the gift that God has bestowed upon me with my writing. I'm not sharing this with you simply to solicit notes of “but you arrrrrrre deeply talented” in a Holly Golightly manner. I'm sharing this with you as a mental inukshuk, (meaning "image of a man's spirit" in the Canadian Inuit language of Inuktitut). of where I have been now so that in my future I can look back and see that I've moved forward. Now that was a truly profound sentence. But I will, in the interest of full disclosure, admit to you that the first word I wrote initially was illicit, rather than solicit. Talented wordsmith am I not?

More Diary than Blog - Meandering Thoughts

Its strange what hits you emotionally sometimes. Tonight I realised that I had 6 white Christmas’ and that I wish I had treasured them more. I thought I was going to have the rest of my lifetime of white Christmas’, but I only had 6 and that realisation has reduced me to tears. I so desperately miss my life in Canada. Who would have thought that possible?

I got the official offer (and congratulations) letter from the university today – finally. The sad part is that I don't feel like opening the bottle of champagne to celebrate. I just want to curl up and cry a bit more. I'm exhausted just thinking about what subject(s) I am going to study the next semester. The subjects of offer are a wee bit (read extremely) boring but I have to get this fourth year out of the way. Ugh. I wish I hadn’t accepted that teaching job straight out of third year and opted instead to complete the forth year way back when dinosaurs walked the earth and I was in university for the first time.

I've been baking like a mad woman lately. All kinds of slices and biscuits to be exact, although I did make a flourless chocolate cake for one of mum’s friends who is allergic to wheat. I have discovered the most Devine chocy fudge biscuit that had over 500g (almost two pounds) of three different types of chocolate in it. Calorific or what? But totally worth it. I should take a photo of the biscuits they are that damn good. They have Cherry Ripes in them and I am thinking that Peppermint Crisp would work just as well. *drool*

Spoke to Game Boy for around 43 seconds last Sunday night. He said he was off to church, but it was 8am his time. I'm not sure that most churches are even open at that time let alone have a service then…. I think he was trying to blow me off. I have repeatedly asked him to get Sweetpea’s health records out to me because the Aussie doctors wont give her any immunisations without knowing what she had in Canada and she is now a year behind. He kept saying “Find somewhere for me to fax them to you” and I kept telling him it isn’t a option, snail mail them to me. I swear he repeated the fax issue three times in 28 seconds (in a 43 second conversation). I want to scream at him, “This is your daughters health you are wasting arguments on”, but what would it achieve? Nothing. All I can hope is that he gets the records to me. And yes, I have rung the health clinic personally, but it still didn’t come through. I think they are now demanding payment and Kathy (the receptionist for my doctor there) didn’t know it and the paediatrician is being stubborn. Either way, my daughter’s health is being compromised and when I go to enrol her at school I will be up poop creek because children here have to be immunised or go through a million hoops to prove why they aren’t. I still really like the idea of home schooling but I fear the government will stop my single parent pension and demand I go out and work to support my daughter and myself. Being a single, stay at home parent isn’t an option with this government, which puts an end to the home schooling option. That option is only for the super rich or the child lucky enough to have two parents.

Mum keeps telling me to cut Sweetpea's hair because its getting in her eyes. I have told her in no uncertain terms that I am NOT giving me child a mullet hair cut to get the hair out of her eyes. I suffered years with short (boy length) hair and I will not make my daughter suffer likewise. Mum swears it was to thicken my hair. Bullocks. You have as many hair follicles as you will ever have and you cant change anything but keeping the hair super short for years. It was only when people kept calling me a boy in front of her in shopping centres that she finally relented and allowed me to grow my hair long. I am simply wanting Sweetpea's hair to grow from the crown of her head to near the nape of her neck so that I can have to cut into a bob of sorts when she finally has enough hair for a first hair cut! Mums constant nagging has meant that now every morning I have to beg Sweetpea to let me put her hair up in a piggy tail to keep her face hair free, which, I have to tell you, she does not appreciate at all. We have fights (lord, she is only two!) of me saying “Pleeeeeeeeease Sweetpea?” and her saying “No!” repeatedly. All I can hope is that her hair grows quickly. When I look back on Good Friday photos her hair wasn’t as thick as it is now, so there is hope! I want to get my hair cut.

I watched the movie “The Family Stone” tonight. In words of a great Scottish lass I know around this OD joint, it sucked big hairy donkey balls. Boring doesn’t come close to describing it. Equally disappointing was the movie “Little Miss Sunshine”, which is really frustrating because I spent $16 on the damn thing. Barrrrrr-humbug. Which makes me miss the pawn shop that was a 15 minute walk from my home in Ottawa, which had DVD’s for $5. I miss my life in Ottawa.

My sister has officially popped at 15 weeks. It isn’t easy to always be happy for her. Its my own issue of overwhelming jealousy. I had to tell Mum that she was ripping my heart out every time to started to talk about how she hoped it was a girl and that I should be handing over all my stuff to Laywer Girl. I told her that if she knew my prayers were to have another child somehow, why would she ask me to give my stuff away. That you only give baby stuff away when you have finished having babies. I hope that she shuts up about it, because I am not ready to hand over any of my things (my memories and hopes) to Laywer Girl and BIL. I want to hang on to them for now.

Its become a routine that when I go into the shower and have my hair wet and plastered to my back Sweetpea opens the door and puckers up for a kiss. I think its really because she likes the fiant feeling of water showering over her, but it could also be because she wants to kiss me. I’ll take the second option.

Money Well Spent?

The great thing about living in a country with universal health care is that everyone, eventually gets access to all kinds of health practitioners. The down side to living in a country with universal health care is that the government places limits on how often you can access different areas of medical treatment, because of the need to keep total governmental spending down.

October last, when I first received the (tres classe) e-mail from Game Boy that he was ending our marriage, I confess to spiralling into kind of despair that would leave most people suicidal at best. Fully aware that I was the only stable parental figure in Sweetpea's life, I hotfooted it to the doctors to request counselling help. I was referred to a mental health specialist and informed that the government would pay for a grand total of six sessions for me to get my act together. Talk about putting a band aid over a open heart surgery wound.

In three weeks time I will have used my six sessions, and I have to say that I am fairly unimpressed with the whole system. Not that my psychologist isn’t caring; she truly is. But the whole time I have felt like she has had a list on her mental clip board of all my problems that she is duty bound to report as fixed to receive her government pay packet.

Insomnia – I sleep depending on my ability to keep fears at bay – check.
Midnight comfort eating – I haven’t eaten past 9pm in the last 8 weeks – check
Wanting to kill myself – I now want to kill him – check

Check. Check. Check. Its hard to not notice the small smile of self congratulations that plays on the psychologists lips as she sees that my presenting issues are resolved, in a manner of speaking. So has the money the Australian government poured into my health care been well spent? Have I really gotten anything out of the sessions I've spent with the psychologist? No.

Well to be really honest, that isn’t completely true. After four sessions with the psychologist I decided that the only way I was going to heal my heart and get my life back on track was to run back to the (often tough) loving arms of my life coach and take charge of things myself. Its thanks to my life coach that I have come so far in the course of four months. So maybe the government hasn’t wasted its money after all. After all, I'm now working with a Canadian life coach, and I'm not suicidal with grief. Its all good in the end. Now if I could work out of my system the murderous thoughts I harbour towards Game Boy I would sleep even better at night.

Changing Wardrobes.

I spent the early part of the evening sorting out your clothes last night. The changing of the season signalled the reality that I could avoid the job no more. No longer could I dress you in several layers of summer clothes, hoping that your lips would not turn blue and that bare legs would not be frowned upon by supposedly superior beings when we went out in public. No, it was high time that I broke out the thicker clothes that I had stored up magpie like in plastic bags, bought over the past summer sales period that I hope will keep you warm during the autumn and winter seasons.

It was time, I knew in my heart, to sort out the clothes that were too small for you and pack them away. I had been dreading this task, as I knew that it was going to be hard sentimentally for me. For with each item I put aside as too small, an image of your father and I flashed before my eyes. The moment that he held up the pair of jeans that he had found with small love heart shaped pockets played out fully in my minds eye. My heart endured the surge of emotions of joy and fulfilment. I could hear his voice as he sighed with the pleasure of simply buying something cute and girly for you to wear. The day I found the cardigan with the multi-coloured strands of yarn which was followed by a simple lunch of burgers and chips where we talked and laughed and enjoyed the newly renovated shopping mall with the skylight roofing that allowed the thin winter sunshine to fill the atrium. The dress that I bought on a trip downtown to a store that no longer exists, that had hung on the canopy railings of our bed, that you were photographed in for a major daily newspaper article about an entrepreneurial exploit of mine.

This task was more than saying goodbye to old favourites of clothing simply to make room for items waiting to become the new favourites. This task made my heart ache because it was saying goodbye to the shared parenting times I had with your father. Officially, I have now been a single parent longer than I was a parent with a partner. Your well being, your upbringing has been primarily my job, my burden to carry. Burden because each and every day I second guess myself and worry that I am making bad decisions that will fundamentally change who you will become at the end of your journey to adulthood. I lie awake at night and wish I had another voice in the dark to whisper my fears to. I miss the camaraderie in sharing this parental load with your father on a daily basis. I know that your father supports me from across the distance and when prompted he will tell me that he trusts me completely with your life. But I long to hear comfort and confirmation that my best is enough and that you will be who you are meant to be despite my parenting attempts.

I put away the items that I had clung too in these recent months, because it was my last link with the man I had chosen to move to an adoptive homeland that I discover anew each day I am missing so desperately. The simple task of clothing your body is no longer a shared pleasure. Now we choose items alone for you and hope that the other will approve, or at least accept. Dealing with the certainty of your growth towards maturity has me crying still with a strange mixture of grief and pride. But as I went through your clothes last night, I put away another piece of my heart.

Who Me? So What!

Nervously I walked into the building, clutching my daughter’s hand for courage, although I'm sure I'm supposed to say it was to comfort her. This was the first of many days that I knew from the very first moments I had held her, as a newborn child that would come into my life. Yet I had successfully ignored the reality of it for two years.

I signed the enrolment forms, paid the fees and after taking a deep breath to calm my nerves, took Sweetpea into her first Mainly Music playgroup. Of course, as the universe would have it, earlier that morning there had been a major accident on the freeway, so what would have been a perfectly timed journey had turned into a 20-minute late entry. Everyone was sitting in a circle on the floor, having been given homemade maracas filled with dried rice dyed blue studded with gold flecks of foil to shake to the beat of the song. Sweetpea wasn’t really into the maracas, bar clinging onto both hers and mine and refusing to do anything with them.

After a shared snack time of cut up cubes of the next-to-last fresh summer fruit of the season it was free play time. Those of us with toddlers and small children herded them outside to the playgroup shaded by giant eucalyptus trees and the shade sails that are so hugely popular in this country. Standing around making small talk with strangers is my idea of perfect torture. Still, I knew that if I was going to make this a regular part of my daughters educational opportunities, I was going to have to swallow my fears and talk to the other women that seemed so at ease with each other.

“So is this your first time here?”

“Yes, how can you tell? Is it the deer caught in the headlights look on my face that gives it away?” I replied.

Laughter followed, which I read to be a good sign.

“Is she your only child?”

“Yes, she is, and she is my pride and joy. How many children do you have?”

“Two here and one at school already” she replied, managing to drop the name of the exclusive boys school into the conversation.

Out of the corner of my eye I had been watching a group of three boys (‘da thugs’ as I christened them in the later retelling of the event to my mother) purposely refusing to allow Sweetpea to join in their games, even though she was truly innocent about what was going on. She had been standing outside a cubbyhouse, wanting desperately to join the little boys, and they had been shouting at her to go away, that there was no room for her. Oh how my heart ached. Yes, yes, yes, I understand that this is the law of the jungle and this is how children work and yadda yadda yah. I'm a school teacher. I know how it works. I've made a career for many years out of knowing how it works. But we are talking about my Sweetpea here, and all the protective passion of a mother lion wanting to guard her young cub came to the surface. Obviously, my face hides nothing well, as the mother I had been talking to jokingly shrieked,

“Look out! Over protective mother on the loose!”

It was like a knife to the heart. My already shaky self confidence in my parenting skills crumbled to the ground as if hit by a 6.8 Richter scale earthquake. Squaring my shoulders I went and redirected Sweetpea to another activity and kept my distance from the shrieking harpy as I had now named the ‘didn’t give a damn’ mother. But the words “over protective mother’ were burnt into my mind.

And several hours latter I was still considering them. I had sworn up and down as I underwent fertility treatment year after year that I wouldn’t wrap my child up in cotton wool if I was ever so lucky to be blessed with a child, I would allow my child to deal with the real world knocks and scraps and let her grow up to be free and strong. Could it be true that I was over protective? Was I holding Sweetpea back because of my own fears and inability to allow her to be roughed up a bit by the real world?

And then it dawned on me, bright and clear and the early morning rays of sunshine that banish the darkness of the night. Even if I was ‘over protective’ according to the views and opinions of some people, it was OK by me. Because if that mother had had her world pulled from under her as mine has been in the last year, left with nothing but three suitcases of holiday clothing and a small baby, I would be willing to bet my bottom dollar that she too would be a smidge over protective of her children. She would be desperate to hold onto what little she had left to provide some kind of stability for her child, she would do whatever it took to make sure that the most precious thing left to her – her child – was safe and happy. She would hover and worry and feel stupid for it all at the same time.

But its OK. I wont be this way forever, it isn’t a natural part of my personality and its not how I want to bring up Sweetpea. But this is a healing period in both our lives. This will be the first of ‘one step at a time’ experiences until it feels normal to be a single parent with my daughter. So tomorrow is Mainly Music playgroup day for Sweetpea and I. Want to join us be over protective and shake some maracas?

Making the Choice

For better or worse, I have decided to live a part of my life open to public viewing by way of writing for a blog about my life as a newly single parent. Choosing to put my thoughts and choices on a public domain such as blogspot opens a Pandora’s box of possibilities – all of which are virtual. Being open about things I'm considering can leave me wide open to judgement and attack or applause and support according to personal whim. But as I choose what to reveal here and what I keep close to my heart, you only get a limited version of my life and if you don't know me personally, then the person who is the writer behind the internet page will always be hidden.

Writing has always been an effective method in helping me clarify my inner spirit. It has always been the most effective way to my soul. Writing has helped me come to serious decisions, work out problems and formulate plans for my future. Writing helps me work through the reflections of my heart and clarify what are true for me and what can be discarded as unimportant or unnecessary.

So here is a card I have held close to my chest. Here is something I've been mulling over in my heart for a long while. I'm still not completely sure that this is the right direction to take, I've decided that I have to at least try to push on the door to see if it will open. If the door doesn’t open I will assume that a window will open elsewhere for me. But here it is, in writing. This is as real as it gets for me.

I have a consultation with the Melbourne IVF group next month to see about the possibility of attempting to have a second child. The law in this state, being an ass, has made it so that a woman without a male partner has to prove that she is infertile before she can be accepted onto the program for IVF. As luck would have it, I was a patient for several years with my first husband, thus proving my infertility, so it has been relatively easy for me to get to this point of the journey. Most women in my position have to battle just to get here, but in a matter of weeks, if all goes as smoothly as everything has so far, I assume I will be doing through the counselling required for a single woman to choose donor sperm and attempt IVF.

Do I think that single parent families are the ideal? Who can say? I don't think that God really planned it this way, but for better or worse it’s a possibility for women now days. And for what its worth, I think that a lot of single women who choose parenthood do a fantastic job at it, because they want it so desperately. I don't want to have the regrets in later life that my mother has. She still talks about her desire to have had another child. She wishes that she had listened to her inner voice and tried her luck again instead of worrying about what others would say. I don't foresee the right man waltzing into my life in a timely fashion for me to attempt having another baby with him, so I have to make choices now. This is my choice.

Yes, I would much prefer to try to have a second child with a husband by my side. I still wish that my marriage was alive and that this whole IVF route was memory that made Sweetpea all the sweeter in my life. But its not an option. My husband has decided that we make better friends than spouses, and he doesn’t see a point in even attempting to work on what we had. In his mind, its over, so for me, there is no other option. I'm turning thirty-seven in a matter of months. The biological side of things wasn’t running smoothly to begin with, and now that my biological clock is chiming the midnight hour on my ability to have a child, I'm not sure I want to waste any more time wondering if it’s the right thing to do because I fear what some members of society will say about my choices. So there it is. Mine and mine alone - my choice.

The Beginning of Empowerment.

In the quest for personal independence, I finally sat down and looked at all my Superannuation paperwork. Which in actuality is envelopes stuffed with reports and balance sheets and reams of paper that would equal at least half a tree’s worth of waste. I'm not sure about you, but Superannuation is all about retirement, which is so far off in the future that I really don't think about it. I would have to sit down and mentally figure out when I would be eligible to retire…. 2030. I will be eligible to retire in 2030, and that’s so far away I don't think many people my age are thinking seriously about it at all. All this thought about retirement, superannuation and the future makes me feel as if it would be easier to put my hands over my ears and sing “La La La” off key and pretend that its not real.

But today I opened the many envelopes from the superannuation fund companies that have cluttered my desk with thoughts of ‘someday soon’, pulled out the balance sheets and really looked at the figures. I looked at the fees the management funds deducted from my account. I looked at the average growth of each fund and the returns on the money they had invested on my behalf. To my horror, I saw that one fund was so out of date with my identifying information that it had me with my former husband’s surname, that is, the husband I had before Game Boy. A name that I haven’t used since mid 2000. A quick phone call and now I know what I need to do to fix that minor oversight.

Sadly for me there isn’t a whole lot of money in the accounts that I do own. That’s the downside of being a casual teacher and having worked in a foreign country, not having a regular pay cheque to put towards my super. I also inwardly fume at the advice that the so called lawyer who handled my divorce from Pondscum told me, to forget about fighting for the superannuation from him, that it wouldn't be worth the fight. Nevertheless, I do have several small amounts that when rolled over into one account gain me around $1300. Over the course of one year, given the figures from the past year of 16% growth, that $1300 will grow to $1500. In ten years, that figure would be around $5700, and that isn’t so bad for money that I'm not allowed to touch under Australia law until I retire. That doesn’t factor in that in a few years when Sweetpea will be at school and I can return to the workforce and start really adding money to the mix.

One of my resolutions for the coming year was to start working towards true independence for myself. Today I took a step, albeit a small one, towards being responsible for my money: it feels empowering.

Taking My Home On the Road.... Maybe.

I've been thinking, dreaming really. The idea that consumes my every waking moment (well that isn’t strictly true, but it sounds better in the writing) is the idea of packing up what little I have and whilst Sweetpea is young enough, go travelling around Australia.

Originally I thought if hiring a campervan for six months and just taking off. But hiring even from the cheapest, oldest, clapped out 1975 combivan dealership was going to cost me a small fortune, and lets not talk about if I wanted the luxury of a built in bed space! I was quoted prices that ranged from $6,000 to $12,000. Uh, yeah, sure right. I'm going to hire a van for six months for $12,000. BANG! Goes that dream.

Or so I thought. I started looking into buying my own little travelling home. Nothing flash of course, but a place that would give me some security on the road as I travel with Sweetpea and see this big beautiful land of mine. I would have preferred my first car to be a car, but if it turned out to be a snail-truck so I could follow an adventured filled life for a while, it wouldn’t be so bad would it?

Just thinking of the freedom of travelling where ever I wanted, staying as long as I wanted – or picking up and moving on sounds so appealing to me right now. I'm sure there will be people who will think I'm just running away from my reality, but so what if I am? What’s to stop me? Nothing but my own fears really.


All of this will have to wait until I work out what is happening with my life in Canada. I will be returning in a few weeks. I have to take my Citizenship test. I didn’t come this far with Immigration to loose that dream now. But if and when I return, the call to the gypsy life, will that be for me?