Updates

I'm ignoring Christmas this year. Just don't want to know.

Family life here is like a war-zone (has been for months), so Christmas is officially cancelled.

Instead, I've decided to get my New Year's Resolutions sorted and started and completed as early as possible.

Here I go:

1. Clean out the multitude of clothing & shoes I have in boxes, drawers, cupboards from various house-moves and 30-odd years of life. Dump, sell, give away. Whatever, so long as it is gone by the end of January or sooner.

2. Ditch all excess kitchen-ware. Who really needs four sets of dinner plates, and 40 teaspoons? (the second-hand shops are going to love me!)

3. Deposit on the relative who recently had twins every last children's book I own, as I have no need of them currently, and they are just taking up space; I think perhaps my dog and cats have grown out of bedtime stories now (not so sure about the horse though!).

4. Deposit on the same relative all my excess cook books that I have no need for. The only ones I want to keep are my high school cook book, and a small collection of WW2-related cook books, really.

5. Sell most of my books that I don't read. Ebay - here I come! Same goes for my craft stuff, cds, and dvds.

6. Ditch Foxtel. $140 per month? Seriously? Given I watch it maybe once a month, if that - really not worth the expense.

7. Buy out my new mobile phone so that I can change the contract down to one that is more affordable. I rarely use it as I get very little signal anyway, so why pay excess charges for it if I don't need it?

8. Lose excess weight. This weight thinks it is my best friend, it's been around so bloody long!

9. Sort out my old place and put it on the market. I've lived at my current place (down with Dad) for long enough that I really can't afford to keep the old place that I moved out of. Nor do I ever want to move back there. It was useful to hold on to while I was getting the "you do things my way or you are out on the street" routine from the family however. Plus it is a cause of contention just now, so best gone as soon as possible.

10. Remind my family that I am not their personal slave. I'm not here to nursemaid, resolve fights between family members, take sides, or generally just sit on a proverbial shelf, waiting to be needed. It has caused more heartache than necessary, and robbed me of having a fantastic life where and with whom I want. I've put up with their needs and wants for long enough. I want to have a life before it is too late.

When do I start this? Already have.

I'm walking daily while I'm up at Mum's, and I've changed my diet so that I am eating less calories than I need to keep my current weight at what it is (did the BMI/BMR thing - all sorted so it's being done properly), thereby losing weight.

Started cancelling online subscriptions to things I no longer use or don't have the need for or just can't plain afford anymore (this really would have been number 11, had I bothered to include it).

Number 1 & 2 I start tomorrow (Christmas Eve), hoping to be finished by about Boxing Day.

Number 3 & 4 needs to be sorted before I come back to Brisbane to stay with Mum next week (to see part 3 of the Hobbit), so they can be dumped at Mum's for the relative to pick up.

Number 6 I would also like to see completed before next week, as the Foxtel box needs to be picked up from a residential address, so again, Mum's.

Number 5 will take some time. Some of the books will go to a local second hand bookshop that will buy them off me, same for craft magazines and books.

Number 7 I hope to have completed by Friday this week.

Number 8 takes time. Nothing I can do about that.

 Number 9 will be worked around the storm season, as it is quite scary up at the old house when there is a storm about - plus the air con doesn't work there at the moment, so the house is like an oven most of the time. But I want it all finished and sold by March at the latest. Preferably February.

Number 10 has already been started. Words have been had with parents over this, and words will be had with siblings in the next few days over this. I've been too complacent for far too long, to my utter and abject misery. 

Now, on to other things.

Life in Australia has been a bit shit recently, hasn't it?

Last Monday in Sydney (the siege). Last Friday in Cairns (the child murders).

Deaths of previous Prime Ministers (Gough Whitlam), and previous Premiers (Wayne Goss).

Scary storms in Brisbane, the likes of which haven't been seen since the 1980s (I remember that storm - hailed so much it looked like snow).

It is interesting to note that no one has spoken about cyclones yet. By now, each year, we've had the predictions of 6-9 cyclones this storm season, but so far, I've not heard a word of it. Just daily severe storm warnings.

A few weeks back, Dad and I went without power for 24 hours due to a storm. The animals on the farm ate well out of our freezers as a result. Nothing was saved - all went to the animals.

And Joe Cocker died, Acker Bilk died, Lynda Bellingham died. 

Mum got sick, Dad got shitty at the world, I got sick of the family. We lost one of our good rams to tetanus, but his brother is still with us, so all is not lost. Most of the lambs born this year were rams rather than ewes, which will mean a culling soon I guess.

Malaysia Airlines had a bad run of things this year as well. Planes disappearing, planes being shot down. 

Heathrow Airport in the shit last week for computer errors, or so it seems, with more than half the flights in or out being cancelled.

France this past weekend having two terrorist attacks on French soil. Now they know how we feel here in Australia, I guess. All terrorist attacks are bad though, no matter where and how many or how often.

My sibling sometime in the past year went to a Citizenship Ceremony for a friend here in Brisbane. It got me looking at what is involved in becoming an Australian citizen, which reminded me of something I read on another blog (possibly Ceramix, not sure) about British citizenship exams. To get citizenship or "indefinite leave to stay" in the UK, you must first prove that you have an understanding of the English language up to a certain level, unless you come from one of the countries listed on the UK Border Agency website, which I do (Australia being about third down on the list), and then you must do something called the Life in the UK test. I had a look at this today, and I average about 86% on the practice tests online. Sometimes I get only about 50% which is a total fail, but anything over 75% is a pass, so for the most part, I'm doing quite well. Given the questions are WAAAAAY out there, and not all that relevant to English modern life as we see it (one question was "Who was the first Archbishop of England?", another being something about "When was the Battle of Bannockburn?"), I think I did pretty well. Asking questions like "What is the drink/drive limit on UK roads?" might be a more useful one (it's 35, for those who are interested - thank you "Motorway Cops" and "Traffic Cops" for instilling that bit of information in my head), or "What side of the road are you required to drive on when in England?" (same side as Australia, as it happens) or even, continuing with the driving theme "How long can you drive on a foreign licence before you must sit for an British driving licence?" (it's 12 months - again thanks for the knowledge from the british cop shows).

Having done the online practice test for the Aussie Citizenship exam, I did pretty well, except on things like politics. Given that Queensland has only one legislative assembly (the other states have two), and that each state has its own rules and regulations - right down to road rules - the tests are pretty hard. That said, I did pass. You need 15 out of 20 questions right, and I got 18 out of 20, so not bad. Our questions are a bit more relevant to Australia though - "What is the reason we celebrate ANZAC day on 25 April each year?", "What is one of the roles of the Governor General?" "Who keeps peace and order in Australia?" (I liked that one as one of the answers offered in the multiple choice for that question was "lawyers"). Another question that is quite relevant is "What are the colours of the Aboriginal Flag?".

And moving right along, changing directions again, as I am wont to do, I've been complaining to my boyfriend of late about the severe pain in my left foot. It got so bad I could barely walk at one point. I was starting to think that I had broken a bone in one of my toes, it felt so painful. Anyway, one night I remembered that my Dad - keeper of all bits of irrelevant knowledge (he'd do well on the UK citizenship test, that's for sure!) - once told me that when dealing with a dog with arthritis (when you have greyhounds in the family, all medical knowledge generally gets said to you with "this is how I treat a greyhound with the same symptons..."), he gave them fish oil, calcium, and glucosamine for the arthritis, and magnesium to stop the cramps that generally come with arthritis (actually it comes from walking funny to avoid the arthritis). Having tried this in the past and found it works, I've been back on it now for about a month. While I still had some pain in my foot, it seems to have magically disappeared since I've been at Mum's since Saturday and going for walks every day. I'm starting to wonder if the pain didn't arrive when I stopped walking after four months in Brisbane in the middle of the year looking after my sick Mum! Either way - one less thing to make me grumpy and feeling like the world is ending anyway.

So that is how things stand at the moment. Updates will come when New Year's Resolutions get completed. 

The long and the short of it is - I'm sick of not having any control over my life, so I've told the relatives most nearest and dearest to me that they need to keep their nose out of things, look after themselves for once, and LET.ME.HAVE.A.LIFE.

So there you go.