Weekly Photo Challenge: Possibility

Ok, so technically this isn’t a photo, but I still think it’s appropriate for this week’s challenge because in this blank page I see endless possibilities – the possibility for a fantastic novel, or for the (seemingly inevitable) crippling writer’s block that strikes whenever I actually have the time to write. Which is not very often these days.

I might blog about this soon but just in case you don’t hear from me for a little while, these are my current excuses:

1. I have several major assignments due for Uni
2. I am in the process of moving house
3. Lil Miss Awesome is turning 1 in a few weeks so I have her very first birthday party to plan
4. My mother-in-law is coming up from interstate to stay with us for said birthday party

And, of course, all of these things are happening at the same time – and during a period where Lil Miss Awesome has decided that sleeping is a waste of time! They say if you want something done, you should give it to a busy woman, but, if you want it done right you should probably give it to a well-rested busy woman who isn’t notorious for procrastination and being easily distracted…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Comfort

It seems to me that babies are experts at making themselves comfortable, so for this week’s photo challenge I decided to let Lil Miss Awesome demonstrate “Comfort.” I couldn’t stop at just one photo, though, because she’s just too cute!

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Fall

I can’t say that I was very inspired by this week’s photo challenge theme of “Fall”. For a start, if we’re talking seasons, then in Australia we call it “autumn” and it won’t be here for months, so I couldn’t just go outside and start taking new photos. Then there’s the fact that I’ve been busy with Uni assignments this week so I haven’t had time to put my own spin on the theme and take some creative “Fall” photos the way I’d usually try to (I was thinking something along the lines of “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall…”). So, anyway, just so that I could contribute something to the challenge this week, I had a look through my collection and found this photo that I took in autumn last year.

So far, so good…

I think I really may be onto something with this experiment. I’m not going to lie, I haven’t even considered working on my ideas for a novel but at least this blog has brought some organisation to the chaos that is my mind. Since I started this blog, I’ve found that every time I start to get bored with something, I end up logging on here to read Freshly Pressed/one of the blogs I follow, check my stats, or think about what I might write about myself…Unfortunately, as I predicted, now that I’ve given myself the task of posting something new every week I’m also coming up with new ways of getting out of my blogging commitments. Luckily this past week it has been Uni assignments that have distracted me from updating my blog, and since they are definitely more important right now, that tells me that this experiment, albeit boring, is a success…at least so far.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Faces

Get that camera outta my face.

To be honest I was a bit stuck with this week’s photo challenge. I don’t have a collection of ‘face’ photos to choose from the way I did with ‘textures’ and I’m a bit swamped with Uni at the moment so I don’t have a lot of time to spare (that’s also why it’s been a while since my last confession). Then my fantastic idea of photographing the “many faces of Lil Miss Awesome” fizzled out when she decided she’s feeling a little bit camera-shy today. Luckily, Danger Dog came to the rescue. He’s always happy to strike a pose and I think he’s very photogenic – just look at that cheeky little grin!

Danger Dog: Master of Camouflage

Oh, and just in case anybody’s wondering, Confession #4 is on its way (hopefully in the next few days). Really, I swear.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Textured

I absolutely love textures so I couldn’t resist taking part in this week’s Daily Post photo challenge! Every time I take my camera out I end up adding a few dozen new textures to my collection because as far as I’m concerned you can never have enough pictures of sand. Or stone. Or rust. I also have a collection of different skies – cloudless skies, blue skies with wispy clouds, storm clouds… alright, I’ve already established that I’m just a little bit strange so I’m not going to make any apologies for it now. Anyway, these are a few of my favourite textures, I hope you like them!

Believe it or not, I used to be smart.

It’s true. I’m sure this will come as quite a shock to anyone who has only known me post-pregnancy (when hormones and sleep-deprivation started turning my brain to mush) but once upon a time I was a fairly intelligent person, capable of such impressive feats as: holding actual conversations and *gasp* constructing full sentences without even breaking a sweat. Hard to believe, I know. Nowadays, even when I can somehow manage to organise my thoughts into words, the signal seems to get disrupted somewhere between my brain and my mouth so that everything I say comes out as gibberish. The same goes for my writing; last week I had to write my first formal essay since having Lil Miss Awesome and not only did it take me about ten times longer than it would have in the old days, but by the time I finished it I’d gone off on so many different tangents that I completely forgot what my argument was supposed to be. The whole thing really needed to be rewritten but since I only had 25 minutes before the submission deadline, I had no choice but to hand it in as it was. I’m really dreading getting my marks back. Not so much because I care about the grade – the idea of doing Honours seems to have lost some of its appeal – but because my lecturer for this course didn’t know me back when I was smart. I feel like I should have sent a cover note with my assignment, something along the lines of:

“Please find attached my assignment. This essay took more effort than any other I have ever written…unfortunately it is also the worst essay I have ever written. Sorry. I’m not really a moron, I swear!”

*Sigh* I really miss my old brain.

Some of the other things I miss about my pre-motherhood life

• Sleep!!!  Including, but not limited to:
  • Averaging more than 3 hours of sleep per night (or at least having the option to put my insomnia to use on one of my many unfinished projects)
  • Having the option to go to bed earlier than 11.30pm without being woken up 45 minutes later
  • Blocks of sleep lasting longer than 45 minutes
  • Sleeping-in on… well, any day would do
• Long hot bubble baths that aren’t interrupted by an attention-hungry baby…
• Being able to set my own schedule without having to allow for play time, nap time, feeding, changing etc
• Being able to leave things to the last minute because I can always make time later…

Oh, and being allowed to take my migraine medication would be nice too…

Things that I now couldn’t do without

• Being greeted every morning with big smiles, cuddles and kisses
• Having someone actually enjoy my singing!
• My own personal entertainer – who’d have thought that peek-a-boo was so hilarious?!
• Having an excuse to watch Monsters Inc. and various other kids’ movies
• Listening to cute babbling stories punctuated with giggles
• The excitement of hearing my little darling call me “Mama” for the first time 🙂

As much as she is driving me mad at the moment, choosing to have Lil Miss Awesome is still the smartest thing I’ve ever done, and I wouldn’t trade her for all the brain cells and luxuriously long bubble baths in the world.

Although a couple of hours’ sleep wouldn’t go astray…

Confession #3: Zombies made me do it!

Well, I’m sticking with my Procrastinator-Post-A-Week commitment but I’m going to have to keep this post fairly brief because a horde of zombies has stopped me from getting anything productive done today…or yesterday…or just about any other day this past week. It’s not my fault, though! As I’ve mentioned previously, The Motivator has got me hooked on Call of Duty: Black Ops (the Zombies part of it, anyway) and now at odd moments during the day I’ll find myself daydreaming about whether it’s better for me to get the power on quickly and use my points to buy the Bowie Knife, or to take the risk on the mystery box and hope that I’ll score the Ballistic Knife or Thundergun (I’m usually not that lucky).

Lately I’ve managed to (mostly) resist the temptation of playing on my own – which may have something to do with the fact that I don’t get very far by myself and the zombie-gollum thingies freak me out – but now we’ve made the mistake of introducing my sister and best friend to the game too, and with four players the game is just that little bit more interesting…

So far Lil Sis has managed to avoid the addiction and only plays when we ask her to, so either she has a lot more will-power than the rest of us or she’s just not that interested in having The Motivator yelling instructions at her and whingeing when she takes ‘his’ kills. Probably a bit of both. My best friend on the other hand is hopelessly obsessed and I am therefore holding him responsible for my total lack of productivity. I had a lot planned for this weekend (unfortunately all homework or housework related) but it’s very difficult to turn down a good zombie hunt.

Besides, I have a very severe case of writer’s block at the moment and I can’t even remember what the book I am supposed to be analysing is about so it only makes sense that I should take a break and kill zombies. It’s great inspiration.

PS. Does anyone know if there’s a way to get the Thundergun in Kino Der Toten without using the mystery box??? Because I am really sick of getting stuck with the Dragunov against a theatre full of zombies and gollum-thingies.