Where we have been the last few days...

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I remember back in the old days - that is, before children - when I would be up at my local cafe at 6.30am on the dot (yep, opening time) so I could get my favourite table in the corner and write my little heart out before I went home a few hours later to log into work for the day.

Then one day I didn't show up for six weeks (I was overseas) and some of the other regulars at that cafe were asking the staff: 'What happened to that girl in the hoodie? Is she ok? Is she dead?!' The staff laughed and said: 'No, don't worry: she's just overseas. She'll be back in her corner soon enough.'

I'm remembering that this morning because I've been mostly offline for the last few days, and while my friends and regular readers will just assume I've been run off my feet with the kids, for those who don't know that: no, we've been in Halls Gap since Thursday with my family and it was a complete disaster in terms of sleep, so much so that I could barely open my computer. Unusual for me, I know. I can normally get on the laptop no matter how sleep-deprived I am.


Halls Gap is a lovely place to visit - plenty of beautiful scenery and hikes, kangaroos, cockatoos and kookaburras on your doorstep - but it was an ill-timed and disastrous trip for all involved in terms of sleep, the constant inclement/freezing weather and also the fact that we're heading into the EOFY in Australia so those of us that work are drowning in work-shit at the moment - which happens in any profession at this time of year. It's the same as the lead-up to Christmas. All those things that should have been done earlier in the year suddenly have to GET DONE NOW before the new financial year or calendar year begins.

And then there's the whole tax thing. I'm self-employed so I do all my own tax (I'm not the only one in my family), and we need to submit our tax returns asap - especially in our case, since we've got refunds coming and underpaid childcare benefits/rebates heading our way (long story), which we desperately need because we've got bills to pay and those financial windfalls could make all the difference in terms of whether we can meet the mortgage payments/council rates/utilities bills over the next few months. Blurgh.


Why was the sleep disastrous? Well, we all know by now that I have hyper-arousal chronic insomnia that's related to noise-disturbance, but here's the thing, we were in a corrugated iron house on stilts in high winds, rain, hail, foliage that was pelted at the house due to said high winds - so none of us slept well due to the noise overnight. 

The kids were all over the shop (they're not great in foreign environments/cots) so they were up a lot overnight, but in the end it wouldn't have mattered due to the noisy weather and also the fact that the house was shifting due to the winds/stilts issue so our beds were moving overnight. Even Mex was awake a lot from all this and he can usually sleep through fire alarms and the like, but of course, being Mexican, he kept waking up from the shifting bed and thinking he was in an earthquake!

Ach, why do we do this to ourselves...


Anyhoo. I just wanted to jump online and let you guys know why the blog has been at a standstill over the last few days. And just to make things clear, Mex and I did not arrange this family getaway. I'll leave that there ; )

Now I've talked before about the perils of travelling with babies, toddlers and threenagers - and in our experience, it never goes well. Perhaps we're just unlucky. Though I can't help but think that we don't do these holidays for pre-schoolers. We do them for our families and ourselves. 

I can tell you now that both my kids would have been just as happy staying at home and going to the park/playground every day, perhaps visiting the zoo again, spending time with the other kids their age whom they've developed bonds with and sleeping in their own beds at night. 

I've talked about this before when we went to Noosa and our kids weren't that interested in the beach or even ice-creams (perhaps they were too sweet for them). All they wanted to do was go to the playground every day and sit on the swings for hours. We didn't need to go to Noosa for that.

I'll leave that there again ; )

Ach, what a vent. Apologies, do forgive me. I've been up all night again because I was too wired to sleep after three days of not sleeping and also having to get the kids organised for the week at the eleventh hour yesterday, so I've been on my computer since 2am because I don't know what else to do but write through it. 

Indeed, writing is the only way I've found to reduce my stress levels enough so I can get myself together for heading into the city today for an important meeting with my CEO, for which I'll have to throw on a suit for the first time in years (I normally work from home) and get myself looking presentable prior to the mad rush to childcare and kinder. ARGH.

Hope all's well with you, and speak soon x


* All images courtesy of unsplash.com


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