Week 21: Positivity week!

(May 21 – May 27)

I have a nagging feeling that a lot of my diary posts have been bordering on the negative. Not so much “oh, life is terrible!” but certainly a lot of headaches, tiredness, struggling towards the weekend, and so on. Just, you know, weekly life.

To counter that, and to note the fact that life actually is pretty good, I’ve decided to spend this week focusing only on the positive things that happen. So, let’s see how that goes.

Monday

The week starts off well with a day off! This is so I can attend a presentation the Elderbeast is doing for his PEAC class later in the day, but it also gives me lots of extra writing time in the morning. As an added bonus I’m able to get the beef (that I didn’t have time to cook yesterday) in the slow cooker.

Tuesday

The day starts of with a few Christmas photos showing up on one of my feeds—a pleasant reminder of an excellent Christmas dinner last year with friends. After school, the Elderbeast has been invited to attend a session at a local high school where he has to pretend to solve a crime. It’s all part of the gifted and talented program, and a nice opportunity for him to do something different.

Later in the evening I’m mulling over the sci-fi novella I’m currently writing, and a few plot holes magically fix themselves in the process. I love it when that happens.

Wednesday

It’s Wednesday (see above), which is always good: it’s the part of the week where you can comfortably feel the weekend sliding nearer. As an added bonus someone brings cake into the office. At the point I can’t remember who it was, or what type of cake. But I remember that there was cake, which is, overall, the important thing.

I get home and I have two deliveries waiting for me. One is a box of books for the Kinderbeast. He’s been developing quite the temper lately—just a growing thing—and I thought I’d buy him a book to help him understand how to deal with it. But, instead of just one book, I ended up buying a whole box set of books about feelings.

My other delivery is my latest case of wine from Naked Wines, which I mostly ordered (still being reasonably well stocked) because they threw in a very tempting looking Pinot Noir. I scored a second free bottle in a buy one get one free deal, so it’s pretty well filled case all in all. I take great pleasure in unpacking it and relocating the bottles to my wine rack. There’s nothing I like better than a fully stocked wine rack. Except, of course, the work that goes into emptying it again.

Thursday

First highlight of the day is making some decent headway on the sci-fi novella I’m writing. Progress has been a bit on the patchy side, so it’s good to feel like I’m getting somewhere with it.

I leave work early to collect the kids from school and find the results for the Elderbeast’s GATE (Gifted & Talented Exam) waiting for us. It’s a tough exam, so I was never going to be too disappointed if he hasn’t passed. But I open the envelope and find … he passed! It’s a relatively narrow pass—just 8 points above the threshold—but it’s still a pass, and his score places him somewhere in the top 35% of everyone who took the test, which is a pretty decent way of looking at it.

Now we just have to wait and see if gets any offers for the Gifted & Talented programs at his chosen schools.

Friday

I’ve booked a half day off due to the NBN coming at some point between 1-5pm to (finally) fix my internet. This is the third appointment, the first two having been cancelled by NBN without notice, so I’m half expecting no one to appear and nothing to happen. The technician ends up calling me at 11:30am—early!!—to see if I’m home. I tell him I can be there in 30 minutes and, miracle of miracles, my NBN is fixed not long after that. The technician confirms that it’s a known problem at the node, which NBN Co have thus far not bothered to fixed properly. It makes me question why I went through six weeks of NBN Co knocking back my requests for them to fix my service. Mostly, however, I’m just glad to have everything fixed.

With a bonus afternoon ahead of me I get through most of the tidying and cleaning that was on my todo list for the weekend. Awesome!

Saturday

It’s my #childfree weekend. I wake up with a headache, which lingers for the entire morning and makes it very hard to find a positive to reflect on for the day. I do, however, manage to find two. First is watching an early Doctor Who (Edge Of Destruction) that I’d never seen before and which turned out to be great. Second is realising that because I’d done so much yesterday, I could afford to rest on the sofa all morning without actually needing to do anything at all, including leaving the house to go shopping. So I count that as a win.

I’m recovered enough by the afternoon for some moderately successful guitar practice. Then I spend my evening watching Interstellar. I’d avoided it to date due to the middling reviews, and also the length, but I end up really enjoying it. It’s got a decent story, enough action and drama to make it a good Saturday night choice, and plenty of meaty stuff to keep me thinking after the credits roll.

Sunday

I enjoy a fun day of gaming with friends (it’s my turn to cook lunch and everyone seems to enjoy the veggie chill I’ve made for them, which puts it on the list of good things for the week). I hurry home after that so I have time to make the roast potatoes to go with the beef that’s been in the slow cooker all day. I few minutes after I get the spuds in the oven there’s an abrupt absence of noise: the oven’s turned itself off. I try switching it back on again. No dice. I figure that the fuse has popped, go outside and, sure enough, it’s off. I put it back on, return to the kitchen, and the oven works again.

Except it doesn’t. The lights come on and some warmth happens, but it’s definitely not enough to cook with. I end up having to fry the potatoes and manage to get them just barely edible.

So where’s the positive? It’s hard to end a supposedly Positive Week with the death of one of your major appliances. However, this does finally give me the reason I need to buy a new oven, which means I will once again have a working grill, which means I can eat endless cheese on toast!

That’s the way I’m looking at it.

I end the day watching Shaun Of The Dead with the Elderbeast. He loves it, but it’s about 98% less appropriate for him that I remembered. The movie virtually starts off with someone asking: “Do any of you cunts want a drink?”

Top parenting win there.

Watched

Read

Still making my way through The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet.

Eaten