Lotus Unfolding

The “massive” week is finally over. Last Monday night Michael’s mum (mother-in-law aka MIL aka Devil Woman) flew over from Perth arriving in Melbourne around 6am. We had to pick her up, then collect the cat, then get her to her motel. The motel room was an absolute disaster cesspool of grossness when we got there so I ended up asking Grandma if she could survive a week putting MIL up in her spare bedroom. She agreed so then we took her home and set her up there.

Grandma and MIL ended up getting along quite well. I’m sure by the end of the week they were both sick to death of each other and ready to go their separate ways, but it has served a couple of things. 1. Was to reintroduce Grandma to the need for regular giveaway that can sometimes be more about what we are offering and less about what we are willing to offer at the time; and 2. MIL now has a better connection to my family and may not isolate herself so much from family gatherings, which is the way she was headed from our last “misunderstanding” where she interpreted my invitation to join us for meals and family events as demanding that she attend whether she wants to or not.

The house closed last Tuesday without any issue whatsoever – HUGE RELIEF – so we are now home owners in our beautiful little town of Lakes Entrance. We then set our sights toward finding a new car, because my current little car – Lily – is on her last tyres… poor thing. She has been leaking power steering fluid like there’s no tomorrow causing all kinds of smoking to be going on under the bonnet (hood for Americans) and just an embarrassment in general. But I wasn’t going to pay to get that fixed when I knew a new car was on the horizon.

We were quite fortunate and did some very good manifesting around a car. I had been seeing Toyota Corolla Ascent station wagons around EVERYWHERE. There was even one for sale two houses down – but they were asking way too much for our budget. So we were looking on the CarSales website last Wednesday and put in an enquiry on a couple of cars we liked. Two of them were Corolla Ascent wagons. We then were on our way to get some groceries with the MIL when we got a call asking if we wanted to view the car right then. They were in an entirely different direction, but we said “Sure!” and turned the car around.

We fell in love with this Corolla. It’s 2002 and been owned by an older lady, her son was selling it for her, full service history, nothing wrong with it at all. We put a deposit down pending the RWC coming back as fine the next day. The next day we picked up the car and I’ve been driving it ever since! It’s a beautiful car J  Michael has named ‘him’ George, it seems to suit. Poor Lily is just getting worse, and I am afraid she’s not long for the wrecker’s yard. There are days I wish I hadn’t ever been exposed to Herbie movies as a child because I really do have a soft spot for all cars now……. My heart is very sad at sending her anywhere L

It’s going to be a busy couple of months coming up before I permanently move down to Lakes. I feel like I’m doing a bit of a juggling act, but it’s got to be more the pregnancy brain fog, everything just seems so much more HARDER at the moment to get my head around. I write myself the simplest of notes just trying to plan out my week because otherwise I get to the end of the week and wonder what it was that I had planned to do ???

**

I’ve had some incredibly strange dreams lately:

1. There was a massive, massive, massive tornado headed toward town. My son (that I’m pregnant with now) was about 8yrs old and we were with some of my friends and their children and running for our lives trying to find a place in town that might actually just have a basement (yeah, ok… not likely in Australia). We found an old Masonic lodge type building that had one, but it was going to only be able to hold about 10 people, almost all of us plus a few others, and had to make the decision to go down there sneakily so as to not create a panic among all the people who were milling around knowing they were likely about to die… gah!

2. The next night I dreamed that I was at the farm I grew up on, and in the shed out back. Water just started rising outside the shed, I could see through the windows and it was EVERYWHERE. I was thinking, what do we do once the shed starts to leak? How are we getting out of this one? The world is flooding and we’re all going to die!

3. Not a catastrophic dream, but interesting just the same. I was looking into the sky and saw an alignment of moons (12 of them) in a circle in the sky, like a Medicine Wheel. They were all at different phases of the moon, and in a perfect circle. My teacher’s teacher was there and said to me “This is so rare we might never have seen this in our lifetime.” For a start, Earth had 12 MOONS to line up for a start, but it was more like a constellation you’re seeing in the daytime – you know how when you see the moon during the day with the blue background? It was so beautiful, but seemed very prophetic or something at the same time. Very significant; I have a feeling this might be a lead up to a women’s wheel on our new property.

I’ve been so neglectful in journaling, there’s been a few paper entries that I’ve done and not transcribed, but in general I’ve just been so tired I haven’t bothered to journal anything. I really need to stop doing that because I’m going to lose the entire pregnancy that way which would be a shame, and also isn’t going to help with writing about it later.

So, updates:

1. Work knows I’m pregnant now. The NewBoss has been pretty supportive, but she also knew about it before I told her, so she’d worked out her “gameplan” before coming to me about negotiating my new contract. Basically, there’s no money to maintain this position full time, we all know that, so I’d been hoping to drop back to 4 days a week anyway, she wants to make it 3 days a week. I’m now looking on this as a blessing because frankly, I don’t even want to be here 1 day a week right now. That will likely start in April, so only two more weeks of full time at this point.

2. The NewBoss is currently working out whether it will be more beneficial for me to take a redundancy at the end of May, or just go on maternity leave from the organisation. Because of my Award I am eligible for paid maternity leave through work, as well as the government paid parental leave which kicks in once the baby is born. So she’s working out which option will net me more money and we’re going to go with that. Either way, I’m finished here at the end of May.

3. Somehow I’ve managed to completely ignore the fact that Mercury goes retrograde next Wednesday. That means communication over the next week and the following month is going to get a bit screwy. I’m already seeing it a bit with our mortgage broker. We’re going to have to keep on top of everyone to make sure all the paperwork gets completed by Friday otherwise we may end up with a late closing.

4. Last week was the first time (since agreeing on a settlement price at the end of February) that we have heard from our solicitor/conveyancer. This is because the contract of sale took so long getting out to us because the vendors took over a week to organise the building insurance that had to go in the Section 32. Then everyone had to sign it, and by the time that happened, plus the long weekend, our solicitor claims he only received it last Monday. Of course, the mortgage company is waiting on the land transfer details HE has to draw up in order to finish our mortgage contract…….

5. I cracked it big time with the solicitor. He taaaallllkks  liiiiikkkeeee soooooo slooooooooooow, and I swear it took him like 5 minutes just to get to the damn point. I was like “Damn dude, I was RAISED in a more rural area than you and I don’t talk like a fricking country bumpkin… how is it that you’re a lawyer???” I had to get Michael to deal with him because I was just so stressed even trying to talk to him. Michael got him on the phone and within 3 minutes of “So, first question, do we have to have a bank cheque at the closing or can it be done via direct transfer?” His answer “I’m not sure.” Michael was like “Well, do you have someone who might actually know, given that this has to be sorted out in like a week?” Long story short, Michael got to talk to this guy’s supervisor who knows her shit, and she was soooo helpful. Thank you so much Grandmothers for putting her into our lives because I just don’t know that anything would have happened with Country Bumpkin on the task……

6. So, the land transfer details finally got sent to the mortgage company (this after they told the mortgage company they didn’t even know who we were when they initially contacted them for details) and the mortgage papers arrived yesterday and have been super fast platinum expressed to Perth for Michael’s mum to sign. We should hopefully get them back by Wednesday which means everything will be in place to close next Tuesday.

7. Country Bumpkin started to tell me that if we don’t get the finances sorted then the vendors are sounding like they’re going to charge us penalty interest. He couldn’t tell me exactly how much this was, in fact, he couldn’t tell me much of anything really, useless. Michael talked to the Smart Lady and she said she would be strongly recommending to the vendors not to put that in place, especially once Michael told her the reason the contract of sale (which held up the mortgage papers due to no land transfer details) was so late in getting to them was because the vendors piss-farted around getting the builder’s insurance in the first place.

8. Everything seems to be flowing much better since this woman came on the scene. Honestly, I’m sorely tempted to never work with men again, well men from the country anyway. The mortgage broken from this area has been fabulous, but the real estate agent, Country Bumpkin…. I just seem to be dealing with what seems to be an undercurrent of possibly sexism? They seem to deal better with Michael, so maybe it’s a bit of that. I’ve never really seen or been subject to it, but I’m soooo much more sensitive to this kind of shit now I’m pregnant, it’s amazing. Plus, it’s been a long time since I’ve lived or had to deal with country attitudes. They don’t have an outward thing around this, but there might be that underlying thing of just not wanting to deal with me because … who knows, maybe I point out how stupid they are – I’m much more direct than Michael, I don’t have the patience to pander to egos lately.

9. The pregnancy seems to be going along fine. We have our 20 week ultrasound next Tuesday and hopefully the baby will cooperate and show us what sex it is. I’m leaning toward boy at this point, but I just don’t have the foggiest idea, even M is having trouble tuning in, she thinks I’m going to fall pregnant again rather quickly after this one, so that might be confusing matters as she could be tuning in to that pregnancy .

10. Morning sickness has caught up with me. Was just nausea and occasional sick in 1^st trimester, it’s almost every morning in this trimester. Not supposed to be the case, but it is for me. It’s nothing that continues, though I have been a bit nauseas for a few days running lately, could be residual energy from the Equinox & Full Moon though. Brushing my teeth sets it off, but there’s nothing I can do about that. It’s weird, but yeah, doesn’t matter when I do it, it makes me dry retch (or throw up if I have food in my belly) for about 3-5 mins.

11. I have no sex drive. This makes me really sad. Even Michael is a bit “meh” about the whole thing, but since I was the one with the raging libido before this pregnancy I’m really feeling the change. It’s like “omg I just couldn’t be BOTHERED!” I have passing moments of horniness, but they go away as soon as I think about having to actually do anything. It’s very sad. I was always like “omg why on earth would pregnancy affect your sex drive?” but well, it does. And it’s sad.

12. Last night I was so tired because we had a late night Sunday night (Full Moon Healing Circle) and then early start in the morning (Equinox @ Medicine Wheel). I fell asleep after Million Dollar Drop while watching Good News Week. Michael woke me up coming to bed later, and then all I could hear was this cicada outside making long trilling noises (or whatever noise they make)… just one, so it wasn’t even like a symphony of toning like I usually hear with the groups, instead, it was more like someone blowing a whistle every 2 seconds. I couldn’t get comfortable because I wanted to lie on my back but I can’t anymore, and I was so tired I was bawling because the damn cicada wouldn’t shut up! I think I must have fallen asleep from exhaustion, I don’t remember.

13. I’m tired. I’m really really tired today. Didn’t want to come to work, especially because there’s some “everyone bring a cultural dish to celebrate diversity in the workplace” event on today. I was like… meh. I ended up making Chocolate Ripple Cake, it’s Aussie, I’m Aussie, and it’s so easy to make. Otherwise I was going to take the afternoon off and sleep. I still might. It’s going to depend on how I feel. Right now, I need to go track down Payroll and ask them to print off my last Pay Advice, since mine has gotten lost with the move, I need to know how much leave I have left……………

I had lunch with the new "team" today. The HR Department that is, where the RTO is moving under. Very very nice people, and I think I'm going to really enjoy working with them. It's almost a little disappointing when I think it won't be ongoing because I plan to leave in 3-4 months, but at the same time, might as well go out on a high note feeling happy about the organisation. This is where the RTO should have sat all along, it's so disappointing. New Boss was talking to me at lunch about the plans she has for it, and a working group she wants to set up, and how if we need to "get people in to finish the TAE, we will get someone in". This was unheard of with where it currently sits, because they just didn't want to commit any funds to it. But, now it's HR, which is corporate funded, and it's like Hello people, we have MONEY!  So I'm pretty excited about how things are going to go. I'm hoping to see it really get in a good place, and leave it in a positive state for handover.

I have to schedule in, but my 20 week ultrasound falls around the same time we close on the house. I'm about a week out with the pregnancy I think (so like when I thought I was 12.5 weeks, the scan actually said I was 13 weeks) so I think I'm going to book in for a week earlier, which is just after the equinox. That is the scan where we should be able to find out the sex of the baby - so excited! It's only like 7 weeks away! Eeep. Time is flying, I'm so psyched. Was talking to M this morning and saying how that's the only thing I'm not anxious/stressed/freaked out about right now. Weird.