Seems to describe my life at the moment..but today was a good example.

The Highs:

• ticking off a lot of little items off my “To Do List” – getting lots of stuff done before we head off down south for a week of the school holidays
• enjoying a yummy lunch with my younger brother at my older brother’s new cafe (opened this week)
• the feeling of satisfaction of seeing my photography and design work in use, promoting the cafe (and me)

• the elation of getting booked for 2 portrait sessions in one day!!!!! One – an extended family portrait (Grandparents, Kids and grandkids) and the other – corporate headshots (This is a major HIGH, but I’m also petrified about it!)

The lows

• spending the afternoon in a meeting with my solicitor trying to find a way to resolve the ongoing financial issues with Rocky…

I haven’t blogged about it much because, frankly, I haven’t really wanted to talk about it. I’m sick of it to be honest. Sick of having to constantly be confronted with the disappointment and anger and frustration. As far as we have come in the last year, and as much as he has let us down, part of me still wants to expect the best from him, which means he is still capable of throwing a curve ball when he lets us down yet again.

That’s all a bit cryptic isn’t it, so to explain:

Within a few months of getting back home we came to an agreement on distribution of assets, child support and spousal maintenance. I saw a lawyer, got some advice, talked to Rocky, made a number of concessions on what he had originally promised before we left Mexico and we settled on a monthly amount that he would pay us. It is fair and reasonable and was based on calculations Rocky had done to estimate our monthly needs (I did my own calculations and came up with the same amount). We have always kept detailed budgets so it wasn’t hard to know exactly what the bills and expenses would be. We also agreed (among other things) that Rocky would start putting money away to pay for the school fees, something we had started saving for as a couple from the moment Guerita was born. We discussed that the spousal payments would stop if I remarried, but not if I went back to work since (in his words) “any extra income I earned would allow me to save for the kids”. Just to be clear, that monthly amount allows us to live with the bills we have. It doesn’t give me any prospects of paying off the mortgage before I die, or having a holiday (other than the frequent flyer points/stay with family variety) or buying a new car or renovating my house. It just allows us to tread water.

Since August he has been paying that amount every month on time. I continued to talk to my lawyer about the finer legal points (not changing anything, just getting wording right etc). It took time to get the agreements ready, because…well these things often do take time. I probably didn’t push for it to be done as quickly as I could, there were some minor delays with the lawyer but we got there in the end. I gave the agreement to Rocky so he could seek his own legal advice and we could sign it and get it over with. He delayed because he had to go away for work, and then he wanted to buy a house and thought it best not to have that binding contract when applying for a mortgage. I was reasonable and didn’t object to his delays.

Finally about a month ago he went to see his lawyer and lo and behold she recommends some changes. She thinks its too generous and her proposal:

• reduce the monthly payment and have it fluctuate to reflect his changing income (how convenient that he’s now self-employed)
• stop the spousal payments (which are 65% of the total) after 4 years – yep, that’s right – he’s effectively saying that in 4 years (when Chiq will have been in full time school for all of a minute) I should be able to support myself and the kids on the child support amount alone – which covers the mortgage and not much else.
• not pay for the kids school fees. His reason “I can’t afford it”

If that were to be accepted it would mean I would have to work my arse off in the next 4 years just to stay in the same position I’m in now – so if I was able to support myself and the kids by then, he would get the benefit of reduced payments. On top of that I would have to save the kids school fees myself (because unlike him I don’t think they should suffer, and receive less opportunities because of the decisions he made in life).

Sometimes I lie awake at night trying to work out how I could have married someone so incredibly selfish. Someone who time and time again puts himself first, puts his own needs above his children. I think in his own deluded version of reality he thinks he is a good father. He sees them and talks to them often, they love spending time with him and they do fun things together, like go to the park. Of course, he never has to do housework or laundry or get them ready for school when he’s with them – it’s all play time. When he pulls this sort of stunt, it makes me realise….

He’s really only a father to them when it’s convenient to him.

Well, that’s not good enough as far as I’m concerned. You don’t get to choose when it’s convenient to be a parent and when it’s not; when it would suit you if you didn’t have to pay as much for them. On a few occasions he has cancelled a weekend or visit with them because he’s sick, and while I agree with him that I don’t want him to infect the kids, I also think “hmmm, it’s so easy when you can “call in sick” on your kids”. Most real parents know you can’t do that. Parenting is not a job with sick days or paid holidays. Don’t get me wrong, it is by far and away the best job in the world, and I don’t want to have holidays or sick days from it. I love it when I get an extra weekend with the girls because he’s cancelled, but this tells me a lot about his attitude and sense of responsibility towards the kids.

It’s pretty clear that the more removed he is from our marriage, the less responsible he feels for us. I imagine he assuages whatever guilt he might still feel by telling himself he is only trying to reduce payments to me, not the girls, but I know he knows full well that there’s no real distinction. With kids this young the line between what supports me and supports them is completely blurred.

But while dealing with this, and all the emotions and disappointment it stirs up, is a low, and something I would of course rather not be going through, I left my lawyer’s office today feeling positive and hopeful that we can resolve it without it getting nasty and with the kids properly provided for.

Maybe I’m just a hopeless optimist, but I can’t give up on the idea that my kids can still be happy and well-adjusted, have a good relationship with their father and enjoy all the opportunities they would have had if we’d stayed together. I refuse to accept that they should be the victims of this mess. So I continue to bight my tongue around them, I continue to hand them over to him with a smile and never utter a disparaging word about him to them.

But its hard.

I’ve been thinking about tweaking a few things on the blog lately, and even though I have a million other things I should have been doing last night I decided to give it a shot. I’ve had the Thesis theme installed for quite a while now, but after all the work I did customising that, I had resisted upgrading it to the new version and having to do that all again. The new version makes customising (and retaining those tweaks for further upgrades) much much easier now, so it wasn’t the big job I imagined.

So, the colours and feel of the blog haven’t changed, but I’ve moved things around a little – if you’re reading the RSS feed, click through to check out:

• the new flash rotating header (a different way to display a few photos – hopefully it doesn’t take too long to load)
• magazine style layout on the home page – the first post will show at the top, followed by “teasers” of previous posts. (Next job is to get the thumbnail working on these teasers)
• otherwise, a more streamlined look – I culled a lot of widgets and other tat that I didn’t need.
• the ability to show large photos on the blog – this was my main motivation for the re-design

Sometime soon I’ll probably introduce a new colour scheme to freshen it up, but this was enough for now.

Enjoy!

Time for a bit of tweaking…nothing major just a little bit here and there…but I’ll be in maintenance mode for a while.

See you soon!

When was Week 22 anyway? It was so long ago I can’t remember what happened! I think it must have been the end of May/beginning of June, which means we went away down South for the long weekend and a few other things…

Playing around with a different look – “Low Key” where everything except the subject is dark…

Our weekend down South was very relaxing, mostly spent hanging around at home and walking by the river.

And of course a fair bit of photography

It was a good opportunity to try and build the portfolio with some shots in a beautiful outdoor setting, including some of my niece and nephew (saving those for the photography site when it’s up and running and I have model releases etc)

Guerita’s favourite dinner – Pumpkin Soup. She won’t eat pumpkin, but can’t get enough of my soup.

And last for the week…determination is a good adjective to describe my little one. She is one-eyed and will keep trying and trying until she works it out!

(Apologies for the lacklustre posts these days. I am trying to get back on the blogging track; hopefully I’ll find some interesting words soon…)

I could really do without:

• the endless cycle of head lice treatment. There is nothing more frustrating than the shampooing/treating/conditioning followed by fine tooth combing plus washing every sheet in the house routine – repeat ad nauseum
• finally getting rid of the little buggers, only to find that someone else in the class has them and has given them back to us (or the alternative is that we never got rid them – either way it sucks)
• feeling like the worst hillbilly mother in the world when your youngest gets sent home from daycare because she has lice!
• spending 2 hours painstakingly going through your kids’ hair, picking the lice out (knowing you’ll have to the same thing every day for a week)
• not getting any work done (when the to do list is a mile long) because you lost your child free day

and while I’m on a whinge roll…

• having to buy a new 1TB External Hard Drive because the one you had (that you use to back up all the photos and the work files) got dropped on the floor by a junior member of the family and now doesn’t read and makes a funny noise
• spending what work time you did have trying to fix the chain of problems that seem to have arisen on the computer after using the new EHD to create a backup – including trying to recover all your emails

*sigh*

Sorry, whinge over.

There’s something deliciously delightful about the 2½ year old age, isn’t there? It’s new discoveries everywhere you turn. Language explosions, new games, new skills and a new level of independence.

It’s equal parts frustration too, for toddler and Mummy.

She’s so determined to be independent, my little one. Her most common phrase at the moment is “I do it myself!”.

Sure, I could do without the spilled drinks and the taking-half-an-hour-to-get-dressed-every-morning but it’s so exciting to watch her learn. Today at Tiny Tots Dancing she did a somersault completely on her own, and the look on her face was priceless.

Now if I could just teach her how to do the washing up….

Only a few more weeks to blog and I am completely caught up! Whoops! I was going well there for a while, but I dropped the ball and now I am many weeks behind again…

A few weeks ago an friend gave me a little gift; a thankyou for looking after her boy for the day. It was a little potted plant, fresh and green but for a completely clueless gardener like me, it gave no clue of what treasures it held. I put it on the windowsill and watered it dutifully until a day or so later it rewarded me with half a dozen beautiful tulip blooms! (As I posted the other day, they gave me the perfect subject for some practice macro-style shots on the new baby)

Now of course all the petals have died and are falling off – all you garden gurus out there – what do I do with it now? Keep watering and wait for the next lot?

My blog reader is bursting at the seams these days and I’ve been adding photography blogs left, right and centre! One of the photoblogs I’ve been reading for a while is Leah’s blog A Little Bit About. I love reading the blogs of others on a similar photography path as me, and being inspired by their work. I also follow the blog link trail to all sorts of interesting photo-spots, one of which was the “All I need is a Moment” project. It was started by 2 friends to record a moment in their lives at a randomly chosen time each week. The project has grown to include 6 regular contributors and a Flickr group of ‘momenters’ from all over the world. I joined a few weeks ago and this was my first effort

Taken Friday, 22nd May at 4:21pm – the weather over here had finally started to turn cold, which meant slipper time! It’s not hard to tell we’re an all girl household is it??

There’s also no shortage of pink pyjamas in our house.

My Dad was in hospital for a few nights a few weeks ago for a procedure (he’s fine) and we trooped in to visit him and relieve the boredom of a hospital room. He was armed with a laptop full of movies to watch though, and I can’t imagine watching two small energetic children bound round the room was too relaxing for him. The nurses thought I was quite weird taking photos of his IV!

The weather here the last few weeks has been so unpredictable. After a long, dry and unseasonably warm beginning of May the weather seemed to turn overnight and we had a couple of major storms that brought heaps of water and trees down all over the place, including one at Guerita’s school. but a few days later it was back to being glorious and sunny! Not that I’m complaining, mind you. We seem to have been so busy the last month or so with lots of after school activities that I decided to do something relaxing, take advantage of the beautiful temps and head down to the beach with the kids one afternoon. I had the ulterior motive of getting a silhouette shot for the I Heart Faces comp that week

but it was no hardship on the girls to spend a few hours frolicking in the sand, collecting shells and running along the beach.

I took bazillions of photos…so here’s a selection

There was a lot of shell collecting…

running along the beach…

sliding in the sand

occasionally I managed to catch a pic when they were sitting still

there were plenty of surfboards

vintage planes flying overhead

and even frolicking dolphins in the ocean

To round off the week – one last pic of my eldest girl. One day she’ll get sick of posing for me!

On this day last year, I wrote a post entitled Crappy Birthday to Me.

Needless to say this birthday should be a lot better than the last one.

We’ve definitely come a long way in a year. Things aren’t perfect and I’m still dealing with the fallout (probably will be for years to come). Rocky continues to find new ways to disappoint, but the emotional effect lessens every day.

At least this year, he did manage to organise the kids to get me a present (a beautiful heart shaped charm for my Pandora chosen by Guerita). Last year I had to point out to him that his eldest daughter was devastated that she had no present for me on my birthday. Even after I had mentioned a few days before that it didn’t matter what it was, just that it would be important for her to have someone help her get a present. [Yet another way he was wrapped up in his own world – he forgot]

Anyway, this year is going to be a fun and positive celebration! Guerita greeted me with breakfast in bed this morning followed by cuddles with my sweet girls and a few pressies. Next is lunch with the girls from school followed by dinner at Mum & Dad’s and a birthday dinner (and champagnes) with a few friends tomorrow night at a Wine Bar/Restaurant.

And I just have to choose which one of these I want to put my birthday money towards…

        or         

(The 430ex or 580ex????)

Yes…A definite improvement on last year.

One of the few TV shows I watch with the kids is the news. I keep thinking about the hypocrisy of it since I would never expose them to shows dealing with the subjects you see on the news these days. Breakfast news reports on sex offenders and there are plane crashes, murderers and natural disasters at 6 o’clock.

It’s easy to get desensitised to all this bad news, when you hear so much of it, but sometimes it really hits close to home. Mexico has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately, prompting lots of people to remark to us “Bet you’re glad you’re not in Mexico now!”. The friends I keep in touch with there said the country is only just now getting back to normal after the swine flu outbreak, and they live in a city that was not badly hit.

This weekend, however, I read with horror about the devastating fire in a daycare centre in the city we lived in. I feel sick to the stomach reading the news reports that over 41 children aged between 6 months and 4 years died from asphixiation or burns and many more were injured, some in critical condition. Parents rushed to the daycare centre to hear their children screaming with no way to get out. One man even tried to ram his way into the building with his truck to provide an escape route.

I don’t personally know anyone affected by the fires but I have no doubt that if I were still in Hermosillo I would know of people whose children died or were injured. The children were mostly from fairly poor working class Mexican families, their kids in daycare so both parents could work to make ends meet. Life is tough enough for the working class in Mexico without disasters like this.

As awful as the news of other accidents and disasters are, this one has really affected me. Watching the video at the link above reminded what life was like in Hermosillo and I’m trying not to imagine how horrific it was for those kids. The temperature’s almost certainly already in the 40s every day and its dry and dusty – once that fire got going it would have been terrifying.

The CNN journalist in that video is reporting from outside the hospital Chiq was born in, so its especially awful to think of the babies that died there.

It’s enough to give me nightmares.

And convince me to turn the news off in front of the kids.