Where have you been?

Wow! I haven't made a post since the end of February and we are now in June. The truth is that I never meant to leave it so long but life really did smack me upside the head. I really underestimated how busy life would get with my new job and planning a wedding. It was so overwhelming and the day after the wedding I was so tired that I looked like I had a stroke!

In saying that, I did have the best time and I'm so glad that SB is finally my husband - even if he got the flu the week after our wedding :). And what kind of blogger would I be if I didn't give you a few sneak peeks of guest photos - we're still waiting on our pro pics and video to get back.

It sort of feels like the beginning of a new chapter in our lives and as such, I'll be phasing out Scribbles as my blogging vehicle over the next year and starting to blog at a currently secret location. Continue to follow me here for sporadic posts here and there and a big announcement when the new blog goes public!

I think I could have happily lived in the 50s...

It's now just one week until I go back to work. I think back to the middle of November and how big the chasm of time felt, the time when I was going to be "funemployed". Two and a half months seems like a really long time but it has just gone by in a flash. I know it sounds cliche but it is totally true.

I really worried that I'd feel unfulfilled while staying at home. The financial side of things has been harder - while we certainly haven't struggled, we haven't had a lot of disposable income either and I will have to catch up on my contributions to our wedding account that I would have made in the time I had off (about $1500). What surprised me is how little not working mattered to my sense of self.

A few of my friends who have had children lately feel a loss of a sense of self when not working - that who they are in their job is a large part of their identity and an identity that they can no longer affiliate themselves with. I haven't felt the same. While I love teaching, it isn't as much of my identity as I thought and the desire to teach flows out in different ways when I'm not in a classroom.

This got me to thinking about the future. We hope that we're blessed enough to be able to have children. We've always assumed that I will stay home if financially possible because we both had SAHM/WAHM mothers when we were young. This time has made me realize that I would be blissfully happy to do that if  we have the opportunity; something my thirteen-year old self would have been horrified by.

As modern women we can have it all, or we can have the parts we want. Part of me wants to be a 50s housewife staying home with my (possible future) children, cleaning and cooking lovely meals for my man and that should be no less judged than the woman who choses to go back to work.

Scribblettes, when you look into your future, what do you see?

The Housewifely Routine

My contract wrapped up on Monday so for now I am officially unemployed. Don't feel sad though - very exciting things are happening on the job front for both of us - just a matter of signing paperwork now! It still means, however, that I have around nine weeks of "down time" ahead and the changes in SB's job mean it is unlikely he is going to be able to take much time off at all! Our beach holiday plans have gone down the can.

So what's a girl to do when she's on her own for a few weeks? If she's a nerdy super-planner like me, she makes a routine!

I'm wanting to embrace all the opportunities available to me - I doubt that there will be any time in the future where I will be as free to chase those opportunities as I am now (with my stupendously wonderful fiance's support). I'm also wanting to remain flexible - Bestie is on maternity leave in two weeks and I want to be as available as I can be to her and to my mum as she starts her new chemo.  Thus - the guidelines!

The weekends take care of themselves! We don't have a single weekend day free between now and Christmas and I'm so looking forward to the fun those events will entail! It's the weekdays that have the potential to drive me mental! I do deserve some time to relax - especially after the insanity of the last ten or so weeks - but I don't want to settle into the complacency of slothfulness! Likewise, I want to get some big days out in but I do need to be aware of budget - we are a one-income household as my holiday pay has already been earmarked for different things. So....

Each week will have 1-2 Weekday As, 2-3 Weekday Bs and 1 Big Day Out - in theory. Let me show you how this works for next week:

Monday - Weekday B (meeting up with @marytairua in the afternoon!)

Tuesday  - Varied Weekday B (helping Mum out with getting their house in order for C to come and stay)

Wednesday - Weekday C (heading into the city, meeting up with several different friends, big walks once in town)

Thursday - Weekday A

Friday - Work (another weekday type that will occasionally be slotted in, not frequently enough to be on the list)

Some people can be laissez-faire and blow wherever the wind blows... I just can't. I think that the routine will really help me gain everything I need out of this sabbatical from the "busy life".

So do you think I'm a giant nerd? Do you plan out your holiday time this way? How do you ensure that you have balance?

Ladies who lunch...

Last Wednesday my mother and I went to Tea Royale at the Langham Hotel in Auckland City. The Langham is known for their fabulous high teas and it was something that both she and I had wanted to do. The Tea Royale was a special menu that they were hosting in celebration of the upcoming royal wedding and they had worked with with a local milliner, Natalie Chan, so that the area played host to a whole range of fabulous headpieces. The Winery (the area of the hotel set up for the high teas) has all these lovely armchairs that you just sink into... at least, I think it was the chair and not the glass of champagne!

The menu was amazing:

• Yorkshire pudding with roast beef and horseradish cream
• Profiteroles filled with goat's cheese and plum compote (A-may-zing)
• Prawn and spring onion sandwiches (not a huge fan of prawn, loved this!)
• Petite egg sandwiches with silver accents (don't eat egg so lucky Mum got two)
• Honey and ham biscuit
• Earl grey and orange marinated salmon with honey mustard sauce on pumperknickel
• Pretty in Pink cupcake
• Opera cake with a Baileys liqueur centre (quite strong on the Baileys :D)
• Peppermint jelly on chocolate crunch (odd but delicious)
• Royal vanilla creme brulee
• Champagne mousse with cherry glaze
• Fresh fruit tartlets with lemon curd
• Pistachio macaroon with vanilla cream (was too full to finish, this got left out)
• Freshly baked scones in "regal rose" and "rum & raisin" flavours with cream and marmalade (don't like raisins so I ate BOTH the regal rose... so crispy yet soft)
• St Honore's vanilla cream with crunchy meringue, raspberries and lychees and a rose petal mousse (FAVOURITE)

In addition to that, we also got a glass of champagne and a pot of tea of our choice! For only NZ$59, that is a total bargain. An amazing experience and we WILL be back! Go there if you have the chance :D

This is not a sponsored post, we just had so much fun I had to tell you!

Teaching Interview and other miscellany

I had my interview for my teaching grad school yesterday. I've had panel interviews for jobs before but this was the first time that I've had a panel/group interview... and I have to say that I'm not loving the whole group interview scenario. The guy in my group was a total pompous ass harping on about how his biggest challenge in a school environment would be the petty dictatorships and that he would have to find a school that would suit his tender nature - okay I made up the "tender nature" but it was along those lines. Part of me was okay with it because I think it made me look like a better candidate, but I also felt like he kind of monopolised the time in the interview and there was a lot more that I would have liked to have said that I didn't get the chance to.
In saying that, I think I made a good impression. When asked what I thought my biggest challenge would be as a teacher, I said that I could be quite snide and acerbic when I'm irritated and I would have to watch that around the class... reign in my sarcasm, etc. One of the interviewers said that he didn't necessarily qualify that as a bad thing LOL. They were also impressed that I'd done two school visits and that I had attended at my old school (what's classified in the NZ system as a lower decile school) which has somewhat declined in social standing since I was there. I believe that they think that I probably had the most realistic picture of what being a teacher would be like and that the fact that I was still keen on doing it would stand in my favour. We also had to do a language proficiency test but I can't imagine that I did badly on that :). We find out whether we are in within the next couple of weeks!
In other news, Mum starts chemo today! I'm so excited, even though it seems like a weird thing to be excited about. At least something is finally happening to make her better.

Gasp... my anonymity... she is gone!

I lost my anonymity this morning... well, actually that's not entirely true. I lost it slightly when I added Gala Darling to my facebook and sent her an email letting her know that this was my alter ego, but that's sort of different as she knows me as Scribbles first and "real me" second. This was the first time that someone in my real life has come to know me as Scribbles second. My mum was talking this morning about the conversation that she'd had with my uncle last night, that he (in Christchurch, South Island of NZ) would like her to set up a blog about everything that is going on in her fight against Gertrude (the cancer) so that they can keep appraised of the situation and my mum was really keen. So I should her the functionality of Blogger, and what the end result of my page looks like, plus a few other blogs (powered by Wordpress, etc) so she could get a feel for what she likes and doesn't like. Currently she favours the Wordpress functionality. Although she knows this blog exists, I don't know how often she will read it... and I'm not going to change what I write. This is my place to vent... even if it's about her sometimes :) And I'm lucky that I have a cool mum who understands that.