a day for contemplation

I was lucky enough to watch Sir Ed's funeral while i was at work today. I'm glad i did, except that it got me thinking way too much.

How much can one person do? It is quite simply incredible what Sir Ed achieved - the number of people whose lives are worth living just because he saw there was a need and had the means to assist. 

How much can one person do? there are so many things i want to be and achieve - not least of which are the following: create beautiful things, live sustainably, be a good girlfriend/sister/friend/daughter, exercise, be great at my job, find ways to get ahead, give my time to others...but i can't seem to fit it all in. One inevitably must be sacrificed in order to achieve another - i'd really like to do voluntary work but what with all our craft bizzo and the hours that i work, i don't see how i could do it all without burning myself out. Which means i end up feeling kind of selfish because i'd rathe develop my business ideas than help others who need it more than i need the extra cash (much as i hate to admit it).

I'm still getting over my cold. In fact, i think my cough has got worse. Tim's mum (a nurse) said yesterday that if i'm not better today i should really go to the doctor as i'll prolly need antibiotics. Woohoo. 

And we have our third open home tomorrow, so i have to clean yet again while the boy is out at the wedding rehearsal. At least, again, it's pretty easy, but still driving me mad. 

Rightyo, almost news time. Better get the knitting out. :)

goodbye, Sir Ed

Silly me, i did know when i posted yesterday that the wonderful Sir Ed had died. Not quite sure where that information went when i was writing. I hadn't previously known that much about him, but when we were on holliday, the Mt Egmont/Taranaki information centre (the one up the mountain) told me that he used to climb that mountain all the time. And i've learnt more about him over the past 36 hours, obviously, with all the obits flying around. What an amazing, humble person. How fantastic would it be to achieve either just the mountain climbing or just the humanitarian work that he managed, in one lifetime. Goodness.

I really wanted to try and post a photo with every entry, but i went to take today's and realised that i had just insisted tim take my camera with him to the stock cars. Gutted.

Today was great fun. Not. Oh my god the amount of mess we saw. How is it that some people managed to live in total and utter tips? I saw two bedrooms where the floor was not known to exist. I saw a kitchen that had piles of breakfast and dinner remnants plus the dirty dishes used to make them(it was 3.30pm). I saw socks lying in hallways, didn't even go close to looking at one bathroom that i doubt would have been cleaned in the past year. The most incredible thing was that the worst flats were ones being shown by tenancy agencies. I felt embarrassed for them, some of the places were so disgusting. 

Out of the six or so places we trooped round to today, we filled in one application form. And oh, how i want that flat. It is perfect. Well, i lie. the bathroom could be a little nicer, but everything else about it is wonderful. It felt so nice and homey. Unfortunately the old flat hunt game is starting to resemble more and more what it was like for us in Melbourne - competing with a mass of other people for the few good and reasonably priced flats. So you have to be chatty for as long as possible with the decision maker so that they remember your face when it comes to the crunch. How on earth would a person decide who is going to look after a house the best from the questions asked on an application form, really? There is essentially nothing to differentiate, except for maybe handwriting. 

My fingers and toes are crossed. But we do still have a couple of weeks to find somewhere and we are lucky enough to have a back up in case we lose out on all fronts. The bonus of the back up is that we can be fussy...but the longer we wait to find somewhere, the harder it will be to find flatties.

Crap how did it get to be twenty past 8? Time for more work of the crafty kind while the boy is out being a bogan. Woop woop.