Day (well night) trip

Yesterday I spent about 4 hours volunteering at a fund-raising BBQ at our local Bunnings hardware store. Apparently because I am the committee's Treasurer I was the best person to handle the money. Turns out my 6th grade teacher was really good at his job because he taught me about 14 years ago but I can still do mental addition and subtraction really, really quickly when it involves giving change. The good news is that I went home at 2pm with a box of money that totalled a little over $1200 and there was still 2 hours left to make money. Hopefully that means our community house will be able to get that new fridge a little quicker!

Then last night we went to the Territory Wildlife Park for their semi-annual Twilight Night. We've been there a couple of times before in the day time but not at night before and we wanted to see how it was different. For a start, you get to see different animals up close at night. They brought out owls and flying foxes for the kids to pat as well as the usual snakes and wallabies. We also got to see snakes actually slithering across the road and they have a cane toad "bust" where they encourage people to take some disposable gloves so they can catch the cane toads for disposal.

The kids really enjoyed it and overall it was really fun. We ended up coming home a little earlier than the closing time because the boys were getting tired but we did see the two places we usually visit (acquarium and nocturnal house) and a new place, the billabong, where we saw freshwater crocodiles and turtles by spotlight which was fascinating.

And somehow I managed to get a bit sunburnt between leaving the covered BBQ area and getting to the car, go figure.

*Tap* *tap* Is this thing on?

You know how people say "If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all"? Well, that fairly accurately explains why I haven't been saying anything much at all for the last several months. I have been a cranky bitch and I refuse to inflict that on others when it's just not necessary. Unfortunately being a cranky bitch who isn't talking to others means that it takes longer to get over the grumpiness.

But. One of my bugbears is finished for the year as we have finally completed our community group application for funding, now I just need to accurately work out how much funding we have left for the current financial year (for the non-Aussies, financial year in Australia goes from July 1st to June 30th) and make sure we expend it by June 19th, since that is when the school holidays start and the neighbourhood house officially closes down for a month. That said, since the school holidays here last for a month and my mother is coming to stay for about 10 days I foresee a sharp decline in my temper during the month of July.

I am also in the downhill slide towards moving out of this tiny, tiny, frustratingly not-quite-broken-enough house. DH is due to be posted out of his current job in December and although he has not yet been told where his new posting will be we know it won't be in Darwin. Don't get me wrong, I really have nothing at all against Darwin and I think I could be quite happy living here, but this house is too small, too badly designed and too broken. Since December last year we have had one broken airconditioner, one broken toilet (that is still not fixed), three broken computers (only one of which was due to a small child), 4 different issues with internet connectivity, 5 blown light bulbs, one rewired fusebox, one massive black eye from a child falling on the stairs, lots of bruised legs from children falling on the stairs (mostly because the toilet that works is upstairs from the bedrooms and two of them can't reach the light switches so they walk around in the dark), and one mostly absent husband/father. Oh and one son who is still having major issues about leaving his friends in Sydney, 17 months after we left.

Add to this the fact that I have had to withdraw from university this study period due to a) lack of working computers b) lack of working internet connection c) lack of silence to think and d) lack of time since I've been spending all of the last month working on the funding for the community house and you might understand a little why I ended up with e) lack of motivation.

But the past is the past. Hopefully May will be much better. In one way it already is, since we have just spent a stupidly large amount of money on paying for a Club Med holiday.

So, enough about me. What about you?