Name: Karyn
I read a lot of other Blogs, journals and diaries. I make stuff. Sometimes I write stuff too. I kept a geocities diary for 3 years once. I'm hoping that will mean I'll keep posting here for more than a month or two.
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I used to support a charity that bought cows for women in countries where women weren't really allowed to have a business or money or any of the things we take for granted. But these women needed to buy cows and be business women because all the men had been killed or maimed in the war that made them poor and marginalised. The charity has recently stopped this programme.
Today I gave the meagre sum of $25USD so a lady in Bolivia could get a loan to buy fabric to expand her business as a seamstress and get a market stall. She supports her husband and two children. Her whole loan was for $700USD - all she needed was the remaining $25USD to get the full loan.
The best thing about Kiva is the "revolving" nature of the programme. She gets my money, gets the benefit of being able to grow her business and support her family and in small manageable (interest free) increments she pays her supporters back. Once I get my $25 back, I can then invest it in someone else. So we do her a good turn, then when she pays it back she's able (through me) to do a good turn to someone else. The idea is so elegant in its simplicity and beauty.
www.kiva.org/app.php
This is the time of year when I consolodate. I like this time - the weather is good, the days are just the right length, it's mid year but close enough to the end to feel like I'm on the home stretch.
I want to get down a few notes to self - so I can look back and remember some times dates and events. I'm not so good with calendars - I tend to have them all over the place and write something here, something there and never check any of them. I'm a bad record keeper these days. Long gone are my days on obsession over order and neatness in the "paper" based sphere of my life. I tend to hang loose with that stuff now - it causes me a great deal less stress - even if I sometimes forget things - I just remember I'm human and not a filing cabinet.
So - August 14, 2007 - Jim and family leave to begin their new life in Malaysia. Jim came into our life as a family day care kid when he was 3 months old. For a two year period from when he was 6 months old he was with us 7 days a week from 7am to 7pm. He's now 5. He's my little buddy - just like a little brother. Our birthdays are four days apart - and if you believe in horoscopes we're two Virgos in a pod. I have such an easy time with him because we are eerily similar. From day one his Mum said to me, in her frank Chinese way - "You'll be his other Mother, it's ok in our culture, you'll be looking after him, of course you'll be his other Mother.". This openness and understanding of the dynamic made our relationship easy. We have become part of each other's lives - friends and extended family. We have travelled together - to China, to Malaysia, to Singapore, to Melbourne, we've met and spent time with each other's families and a little boy has brought us all together. It has been a wonderful experience. Although I'll miss Jim, and Sharon and Peter, I know that the opportunities they have in Malaysia are too amazing to pass up. And hey - I'll see them in February for Chinese New Year, and they'll be back here with us for my and Jim's birthdays next September. See ya chops - check your mail box for a parcel!
May 24, 2007 - surgery that has already begun changing my life.
February 6, 2007 - Scott begins a new job - with his old employer working 4 days a week. His dream job - involves reduced responsibility, 1 day off a week, and the a 5 day a week pay packet. His suitably happy and settles in to life as a semi-part-time worker. Having a day off a week suits him, and he's been happier and healthier since.
2007 - I make a concerted effort to get caught up and keep up with my business related paperwork. It's going along ok.
I've been in a bit of a fug for the past twelve months or so. But since May I've been slowly emerging. I'm starting to feel happier, healthier and stronger. Life is good. I've started taking photos again, started sewing and making things, and begun going out and enjoying myself again.
Take 2.
Book Binge Stats:
Number Accounted for: 23
Number unaccounted for: 5 (I lost the library docket with the details - my recordkeeping methods suck)
Re-reads: 3 (This number is abnormally low - but I cranked up the library borrowings)
Abandoned: 2 (The first at chapter 2, the second about 15 pages from the end - I just didn't care anymore and my stamina had waned so much that I couldn't make it to the finish line)
Best Book(s): "Close Range - Wyoming Stories" by Annie Proulx and "The Mammoth Cheese" by Sheri Holman.
Worst Book: "The Accidental Florist (a Jane Jeffry mystery)" by Jill Churchill.
This book wins HANDS DOWN, NO CONTEST. It was so poorly written that I just couldn't stop reading it. It was literary roadkill, I kept laughing and groaning out loud, reading sections of it to my husband until he begged me to stop. The chief problems with the book were: the writing, the abysmal dialogue, the plot, characterisation, gratuitous tense shifting, poor grammar, random plot inclusions, unresolved plot elements, and oh, did I mention the dialogue?
Had I not returned it to the library this morning I would have been able to brighten your day with a passage from one of its (many) pages. However some parts of it are so firmly lodged in my brain that I will take a moment to paraphrase one of the particularly heinous sections of dialogue:
...Jane and Shelley walk into the florist they found conveniently located next to their parking space. Upon entering they are assaulted by the cool fragrant air and wonder to themselves that florist work must be a wonderful line of business.
"Hello ladies. John Thomaseno - I am the owner of this floristry establishment. Are you looking for anything in particular this fine morning, or are you just looking - which you are obviously perfectly welcome to do so."
And it drivels on like this for another 200 pages or so. Really it was so woeful, but I just couldn't put it down, I just had to keep reading to find out what butchery of the English language would occur next.
Generally I occupy myself by re-reading novels from my own stocks. To spice it up I read only thick books for a week or maybe I might read all the orange ones or something like that. Because Scott ran up about a zillion dollars of library fines on my card - I couldn't borrow for the longest time, so I had to occupy myself with my own books. The Book Binge provided the impetus I needed to pay those fines and commence borrowing again. And borrow I did.
Usually my library visits are of the three ring circus variety. Me, a stroller (double or single) and 3 or 4 children "enthusiastically enjoying" their visit to the library. The children's section of our local library is fantastic - big cushions shaped like crocodiles, lily pads, turtles, starfish and flying saucers (?) in abundant quantities just asking - no SCREAMING for children to jump, run and tumble all over them. The books are set out at knee height - knee height to a 3 year old so books are readily accessible. Supervision by an adult of the children they have unleashed is mandatory, lest we be evicted from the library and our borrowing privileges suspended. So I sit, watch and stockpile books. I read books - many while we're there, and usually amass quite an audience of listeners. This is all great but after 40 mins of patiently waiting for the kids to conclude their library dealings they never seem to have any patience for me to take a moment to borrow some books.
Usually as we use the self checkout machine I grab wildly at the one or two novels randomly displayed on the ends of the "Adult Fiction" rows. You would think this tactic would work - except that for the split second my eye is distracted from the children and task at hand they scatter like buckshot and make off for the kids section. However during April I adopted a different approach. Kids sitting in a line, backs to the wall and me frantically running up and down the aisles gabbing anything that looked even remotely readable.
I believe this explains my, shall we say eclectic choices. I mean "Culinary Mystery" - who even knew such a thing existed!
The List:
"The Assistants : a novel" by Robin Lynn Williams
"Double Shot (a culinary mystery)" by Diane Mott Davidson
"Friends, Lovers, Chocolate (an Isobel Dalhousie mystery)" Alexander Mccall Smith
"The Accidental Florist (a Jane Jeffry mystery)" by Jill Churchill
"Hidden" by Paul Jaskunas
"The Houseguest" by Thomas Berger
"The Guy Next Door" by Meg Cabot
"Boy Meets Girl" by Meg Cabot
"In The Image" by Dara Horn (abandoned #1)
"Skylight Confessions" by Alice Hoffman
"The Mammoth Cheese" by Sheri Holman
"Dying for Cake" by Louise Limerick
"Eva Moves the Furniture" by Margot Livesey
"The Little White Car" by Danuta de Rhodes
"Wonderful You" by Mariah Stewart
"Why the Tree Loves the Axe" by Jim Lewis
"Close Range - Wyoming Stories" by Annie Proulx
"Bad Dirt - Wyoming Stories 2" by Annie Proulx
"The Future Homemakers of America" by Laurie Graham (re-read)
"A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson (re-read)
"Corfu - a novel" by Robert Dessaix (abandoned #2)
"American Icon" by Pat Booth (re-read)
"Taking Charge of Bipolar Disorder: a 4 step plan for you and your loved ones to manage your illness and create lasting stability" by Julie A Fast and John Preston (non-fiction)
I have not included any of the books that I read to the kids. The list would stretch on forever and ever - 5 or so books every weekday, double that on library days and sometimes more if we have more or less kids...I just left them off...too hard to keep track of.
Finally. It has been many, many months since we've had rain here. We are in the grip of a very, very severe drought And tonight it's raining. After a spectacular display of thunder and lightening the heavens have opened.
Woot! I'm going outside. (even though it's 9:30pm!)
We've been living with Level 5 water restrictions for awhile now (this won't change just because of tonight's downpour), but maybe it will wash all the dust off my car. Car washing has been prohibited since April 10. Level 5 restrictions mean that only spot cleaning of glass/mirrors/lights/number plates can occur - and my car is looking very shabby.
Oh my god - it is absolutely bucketing down! Amazing. Here is a map showing just how bad it is.
"Bad Dirt" and "Close Range" by Annie Proulx finished. I wonder why she has droped the E from her title - she used to go by E.Annie Proulx - what's changed I wonder?
I squeezed in some reading junk food, and read "Dying for Cake" by Louise Limerick and two novels by Meg Cabot (now they were absolute drivel - almost barely readable, but I soldiered on like a trouper) the titles were, I believe "Boy Meets Girl" and "Boy Next Door". Both were sort of like Mills and Boon for the modern chick.
I'm currently reading "Corfu - a novel" by Robert Dessaix.
The "Book Binge" commenced April 1, 2007. Lucky I've paid my library fines (thanks alot scott), and I've been borrowing up a storm. Due to recent budgetary constraints I've been limited to re-reading my own stocks or borrowing from the library. No budget allocation for new book purchases.
Stats so far:
April 1, 2007: "Close Range - Wyoming Stories" by Annie Proulx. (library)
Sunday is my favourite day of the week. A week finished, a new one beginning. I do all my domestic stuff on Sundays - laundry, sorting, folding, putting away. Clean up the house, put last week away, prepare everything fresh for the new week.
Usually the last thing I do before I go to bed is check Post Secret, by about 10:30pm my time it's been updated and I can sit and savour the new postcards. It's a guilty habit of mine, I like to check it in private, digest and think about the postcards, what they might mean, what they must have meant to their sender. I feel in touch with the world when I read them.
Then I do other mundane stuff, print out time sheets, receipts and other work administrivia. I should log all my receipts and other tax stuff - but I haven't done that for the last 5 years - why start now...
I know it won't be long before I post here that the tax man is knocking on my door.
Craft wise - I made the Humpty Dumpty from Pamela Peake's first book. The pattern turned out to be a little "wonky", and I think I'll rework it for my way of doing things...a couple of things just didn't sit right, that said, I think he looks pretty good. His legs and arms are stuffed and his face is done, I just have to stuff his round little body.
I was in the supermarket yesterday, and I overheard something that made me get all, well, choked up really.
Mum hugging her teenage son, "I love you bub, and love is all we need."
I'm pretty sure she didn't mean for it to be overheard (I just happened to be leaning over to grab a magazine from the "impulse rack"), but I found it really touching.
today
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