Some days are diamonds, some days are pearls......

It's Wednesday.

Hump Day. If there is such a thing. My days and weekends seem to be equally busy.

Last weekend passed in a blur, as usual. Pop's birthday tea was a good old baked dinner, cooked by Nan, which was quite a surprise. Nan really doesn't cook all that much these days, and when the family descends upon her and Pop, we usually eat takeaway, so it was with great delight that we tucked into roast lamb and baked veges. As is typical with Nan, she never cooks by halves. It's almost as if she is making up for the times that she doesn't cook; she will bake 6 different types of biscuits or three cakes instead of the normal number of 1 or 2. The table will be loaded with whatever she cooks. This time, it was roast lamb AND roast beef (which we were too full to even carve) and an enormous baking pan full of veges.

Yum.


Nan & I took GG shopping at Bunnings, then GG & I re-hashed her resume, and worked up a cover letter for an apprenticeship that she wanted to apply for. It took some time. These things always take longer than you think. Then Vegeboy & I headed for home at 6.30pm, around & through some of those wonderful storms on Sunday night. The cloud formations and colours were amazing.

GG posted her application, which is for a Jewellery Manufacturing & Repairing Apprenticeship, on Monday morning. At lunch-time on Tuesday, the employment company asked her to attend an Aptitude, Numeracy and Literacy test and Interview. This evening, a very excited GG telephoned to say that she has been asked to attend an interview with the shop manager next Wednesday morning. WOOT! Last week, after reading the "positions Vacant" ad, she took herself off to meet the manager at the shop to find out a bit about the job before she decided to apply. Maybe he won't be so scary at the interview now that she's already met him. We're laughing about it now, but she forgot to introduce herself to him..... Hopefully, she made a good enough impression, and he'll remember her in a favourable way.

All this in two days, and the applications for the job don't actually close until this Friday.

So tomorrow afternoon after work, I am to drive down to Newie so we can shop for some suitable clothes. I was already planning to go, but I hadn't decided whether I would go down on Thursday night or Friday morning, as I have the appointment with the rheumatologist on Friday morning anyway. So Thursday night it is, so I will probably see the Lucky Ho tearing out her hair at the Hell Mouth formerly known as Charlestown Square whilst on the quest for reasonably priced interview clothes (that will secret the dove tattoos on GG's chest, for the interview at least). Hopefully, he'll like the piercings (one on each side) of her nose. It's jewellery, right?

There's been no news on whether I have been successful on the traineeship front. I received a phone call at work almost 2 weeks ago requested a 3rd type of identification, so I provided the woman with my Hunter New England Health ID number, which was a bit cheeky of me since she was enquiring on behalf of Hunter New England Health....... The information package said that all referees would be contacted by December 14, and results would be posted out by December 21. So we're nearly there.


Scorpaboy's sponsor rang HIM the other night to tell him that he wanted to organise an exchange with a couple of Mototrials riders from New Zealand next year. He has a unit that he and SB could stay in, but there's a couple of sticking points;

• He hasn't talked to Beloved and I about it, just SBoy.
• Sboy sits his Higher School Certificate next year, and believe it or not, this IS important.
• We're broke.
• We've going to continue to be broke (more broke than usual, anyway) for at least the next four months, even without taking the addition into consideration......
  

And anyway, money has to be spent on the house next year, not trips around the world for just 1 member of our family. It's not fair that Sboy should have these things just because the has talent on a motorbike. GG would like to travel overseas, and declined an exchange programme as we couldn't afford it. And we can't afford this either. I'm sure that there is something that Vegeboy's heart desires, also. Same for Beloved, same for me. But we are allowed to have un-realised dreams. As a society, we seem to be blindly accepting of the demands of our children, their peers and others, and are commonly made to feel guilty for saying "no" for whatever reason. The kids just expect us to provide, provide, provide........ and we do. If Sboy wants to go to New Zealand, then he's going to have to get himself a job, and save some money for it. He's had a lovely, leisurely life since his "retirement" from IGA/Thriftylink. So now he has become used to me providing him with money for phone credit, gym workouts, food, entertainment etc. I have bought 3 pairs of shoes and new socks for the boys in the last 6 weeks. And they had a new pair each, and socks (6 pairs each.....) before we went to South Australia in October (that's not very long ago....)

I suppose this makes me selfish, but it's not fair on the other kids that Scorpaboy gets so much..... Even if it is a wonderful opportunity.

That's enough grumbling.

Send some good thoughts GG's way next Wednesday morning, please.

Bedtime. I've grumbled my way into exhaustion.

Goodnight.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz