Another big week!  When is a week not a “big” week?!  No, it’s not the start of a joke, I genuinely want to know!  In this blog: Mia was officially breaking up from kindy, the Christmas parties had started and I was working at the state election!  Enjoy!💕

Monday:

Going back to work after such a fun weekend is always hard!  Plus hangovers seem to take twice as long to recover from nowadays!🤢  Clearly past my prime and it’s all downhill from here!  Motivation Monday eat your heart out!  The glass is clearly half full over here!😜

Anyway, to make up for the monotony of regular life and to keep the birthday celebrations going just that bit longer, I met up with my friends Renee and Dani in the evening, to try out a new dessert bar in town called Moose Bar.  I ended up with a milkshake actually but couldn’t decide between a Nutella one or a peanut butter one, so convinced Dani to have one so we could share!  As a great friend, she obliged!😘As it turned out, I preferred the peanut butter one and she preferred the Nutella one, so we were winning!  They had an extensive cocktail menu in there too, which I will have to try out once I’ve recovered from the latest night out!😉

A duo of deliciousness!😋

Tuesday:

Today I got to go to a lovely school where the group of girls I was working with got me a thank you card for helping them, despite the fact that I had only been there a total of three times!  Very sweet though and it feels so good to be appreciated!❤

Wednesday:

One of my students brought me chocolates today, so I’m clearly on a roll!  And chocolate will forever be the way to my heart!😋🍫

After work it was another madcap dash across town as it was Mia’s kindy end of year celebration!  I asked Ian if he would mind changing out of his work clothes and started World War III.  Apparently I am too controlling.  Maybe I am, but I just want him to make an effort on special occasions!  He conceded and changed into jeans and a t-shirt (the best I’m going to get clearly!), then spent the night pointing out other Dads in work uniform!🙄

Mia sang her little heart out in the performance songs, bless her little cotton socks!  However, a colony of fruit bats (can sometimes be referred to as a camp of bats – thanks Google for the info!😉) decided that this would be the perfect time to flap overhead, which was just way too exciting and distracting for a group of small children and despite the teachers trying their hardest to keep them on task, took the focus away from the stage a little.  It was decided that they would just do two songs instead of three, to which Mia was very put out, as we have been hearing them all repeatedly at bath time for the last 3 weeks at least!🙉I placated her by saying I’d take a video of her singing it later and hoped she would forget!😜

Everyone was on a sugar high after the amazing dessert tables and then Mia decided she would like to queue for way too long to get her face painted when she really needed to be in bed!  I tried to reason with her that we would have to take it off as soon as we got home anyway, but kid logic?!🤷🏼‍♀️I caved as it was her special night and who cares really anyway?!…duh, obviously Grumpy Husband, who got the car keys off me and went to wait in the car, then proceeded to text me to hurry up!  Luckily by the time he got to ringing me, we were on our way out of the door!😅

Face paint, was it really worth the wait?! Well, yes, probably!🙊👸🏼

Thursday:

Had to work at the election so my friend Liv kindly offered to take Mia during my shift. Apparently they saw a boat and Mia said she would like it but “Mummy and Daddy don’t have enough money. But we would if mummy picked a better husband!”😲🙈  Out of the mouths of babes!  Billionaire potential new husbands get in touch!😉

We went to get gifts for Mia’s kindy teachers…and assistants…and afternoon play supervisors…and the teachers in the other rooms…and the Centre Director…you get the picture!  She also wanted to write a proper message to them all and draw a picture in each one!🙈  As much as I love her generosity and enthusiasm, we were taking way too long, so she decided to dictate what she wanted to say!  Well, we had some absolute gems!  My favourite being: “Flowers will bloom and children will grow!” What a little philosopher!🙊

We stayed up as late as we could finishing them off, but she was falling asleep, so we vowed to get up extra early to finish them!

Friday:

True to her word, she was up and ready to finish them off, but we had Giggles Christmas party to get to first, so I promised I would duck home after that and finish off the last few for her friends!😰I just set myself up for a life of panic!

In true FOMO style, Mia wanted to go to the playgroup Christmas party first dressed in her Jazz Christmas dance concert candy cane outfit and then go to her last kindy day which was “Wet Play”, so I needed swimming stuff and dry clothes for afterwards!  Yes, I pander to my child and make a rod for my own back, I am well aware!  But I can’t bear a disappointed little face, so I strive to be Supermum and frequently fly into buildings!😅

Well, the playgroup Christmas party was just brilliant!  Mia was very excited to be Mary in the Nativity play, but was ready to explode with joy when, through a bit of stage fright from initial candidates, her kindy “husband”, Eli, got to play Joseph.  It did drag on slightly (I feel mean critiqueing playgroup age children!🙈) but the photos were pretty funny!

An ecstatic Mary and a slightly apprehensive Joseph with a great wig!👫

Then Santa arrived and Mia’s excited little face got me all choked up!😭She’s been asking so many questions about Santa recently that I was worried his time might be up soon, but from that reaction I think we may be alright for a little while longer!🤞One kid gave Santa a picture she had drawn, but not one to be outdone, Mia pelted over to the craft area to make him an impromptu card.  He said he loved it, there was the added bonus that he now knew her name and I think she thought she was some sort of local celebrity!🙊

We were packing up to the Spice Girls soundtrack (as it was my last ever playgroup, Rowan was catering to my 90s musical tastes!😎) and turned around to this sight, which gave me a bit of a shock!

Panda candy cane?!🙀🐼

I ran to get my phone and capture what seemed to be a perfect summary of our time at playgroup: as mad as a box of frogs, but so much fun!  I will miss my Freaky Fridays, but as Mia will be at school, it is time to move on.  For someone who has moved their life to the other side of the planet, I am really bad with change!🤷🏼‍♀️

We dashed across to kindy to find that “wet play” had finished!😯Mia took the news surprisingly well, probably better than me, who was inwardly lamenting the fact that I had got all the clothes ready for nothing!😑

She was actually more excited about playing Santa and had to personally deliver all of the cards and presents to the staff.  I asked her to be discreet and wait to give out the kids ones to give me chance to dash home and finish them, but she pretty much did the opposite, so there were some disappointed little faces.  As previously stated, I can’t handle disappointed faces, so drove home, finished the cards and got some extra Christmas chocolates for her to give to EVERYONE!😅 My conscience costs me a fortune, I tell ya!🙈

Saturday:

I had to be up at the crack of dawn to get down to my local school to work at the election.  I was actually really excited, having never done it before and possibly came across as annoyingly over eager!🤓

There were four of us working on the booths: an older lady who was a seasoned pro, a girl who had done it before and who was crazily sarcastic and a middle-aged guy with English as a second language.  I sat in the middle next to the sarcastic girl and we set up our laptops and prepared for the onslaught…which never really came!  I had been warned how stressful and crazy the first few hours would be and that I would have to take my breaks to cope, so had been a little apprehensive, but it was fairly steady and at times uneventful!  To make it more interesting, I decided to add some competition to proceedings (sorry, I just can’t resist!) by going to the tuck shop, buying a Caramello Koala as a prize and placing it at the front of our table to motivate us!  Anything for chocolate!😋This turned out to be a stupid idea as all the little kids that came along wanted to steal it, including my own daughter when she came in!🙄

The highlight of my day was seeing all the familiar faces coming in to vote!  I also used it to my advantage by waving at everyone I knew (and those that I didn’t, I have no shame!) and beckoning them over to my station.  By the afternoon session, it was a two-horse race between me and Sarcastic Girl, so I started getting desperate and called Ian to see when he was coming down to boost my numbers!  Mia was so excited and wanted to sit with me to work the computer and scanner but I got a disapproving look from the supervisor, so told her she wasn’t allowed!  I introduced Sarcastic Girl and explained about our competition.  “I’m sorry you have to put up with her today.” Ian said to Sarcastic Girl.  “I’m sorry you have to live with her!” retorted Sarcastic Girl.😲  Um, standing right here!😒

We were very close in numbers all afternoon, but then the supervisor made me go to take a break even though I really didn’t want or need one!🙄 And when I came back Sarcastic Girl was 10 in front and seemingly unassailable!😒  However, they closed her station down and I was the only one still operating…but there was also nobody around at the end, so it was extremely frustrating!  In the end, she beat me by 1 vote!!!😩So annoying!  But in acknowledgement of the supervisor sabotage, she insisted on splitting it with me, so I got my chocolate fix! Yay!🎉

It turned out that I really needed that, as I thought I had finished for the day, but actually we still had to sort all the votes into preferences and then count them all!  I felt slightly inadequate when counting, as Sarcastic Girl was an absolute speed demon!  It turned out that she worked in a bank as her day job so had daily practice, but still!  I hate being pants at things so was determined to improve, which was when I was introduced to the game-changer by the veteran lady, the counting thimble!  Well, I was soon flipping through the ballot papers like it was a designer shoe catalogue!  I feel I should have had some sort of “most improved counter” award, but instead I was assigned the lovely job of taking out the rubbish bags!😑

Ah well, nearly done…well, no….Because there wasn’t enough of a majority for one candidate, we had to then recount everything from the second favourite candidate on everyone’s ballot paper!  Okay, so hold onto your heads the rest of the world…unlike the U.K. where you just put an X next to your favourite candidate, here you have to number every single candidate in order of preference.  And you may think it doesn’t really matter,  yet it totally does if there isn’t a clear majority.  AND if you don’t vote, you get fined!  Don’t get me wrong, I completely believe that it’s important to vote,  but the high number of spoiled ballot papers indicate that a lot of people don’t understand the system or are purely there to avoid the fine, because you’re hardly making a political stand by ballsing it up if you’re anonymous anyway!  And that’s way too much election information for anyone to read, so I got home at 9pm and fell into bed because I had to be up and back at the main election office early the next day!😴

Sunday:

I really had to summon up some energy and motivation to get to work!  I was shattered!  Went to the garage next to the election office and got myself a Red Bull for breakfast!🙈I was too far gone to get wings but I was hoping for “normal human”.

I was also hoping that today was going to be a bit cushier, seeing as it was a Sunday, but I was sadly mistaken and our main task was to recount around 20,000 ballot papers from all the different polling stations!  But why, when everyone had already counted them yesterday, I hear you cry (or maybe that was just me)?!  Well, it turns out some people can’t count very well.  One booth in particular had mistakes in almost every pile of papers!  I was very proud that there were no discrepancies from the booth I had been at, but to be perfectly honest, if I had known I was going to have to check them all again the next day anyway, I may not have tried quite so hard!

We’d been going for around two hours solid and I was one can of Red Bull down, when Dan’s wife called us through to the back room for the most amazing spread!  We were all sitting around the table stuffing our faces, when one of the electoral candidates turned up to see how the count was going and we looked like we were all having a jolly!  Such bad timing!😬🙊We got straight back to counting, mainly because we felt so awkward, but then he proceeded to stand over our shoulders while we were counting, which was extra awkward!  And creepy!🤓

We carried on counting for what felt like an eternity, stopping for regular breaks luckily, as my eyes were so strained and my back was killing me from bending over, not to mention my poor puny wrists from flicking through the papers constantly!  Repetitive Strain Injury claim?!😜

We were just sitting down for our afternoon break, when the candidate turned up again to check on progress.  The guy has impeccable timing!  We were finally allowed to leave at 5pm, so it wasn’t quite as bad as yesterday, but I was literally on my last legs and had to go back to my regular job the next day!😣

One of the ladies I was working with had filled my head with stories of how her husband had run her a bath and given her a back massage when she had got home last night, so I got in anticipating a little bit of compassion.  It didn’t come.  When I lamented the fact, Ian basically laughed me off and couldn’t understand how counting a few bits of paper could be hard?!  Ugh, back to the nonsensical argument of only physical work being difficult!  Generally I try my best to avoid stupid arguments and just swear on the inside, but I was over-tired and now annoyed, so the air turned blue and we both ended up screaming at each other.  Not good when Mia is in the house and not how I wanted to end a rough weekend!

I didn’t get my back rub, but I certainly got rubbed up the wrong way!🙄