Sharing experiences from my life, places I have visited, crafts I have created, and hoping to inspire other people in this journey we call life.
I don’t know why but I am way behind in updating my blog. I’ve been back from Sydney since the 17th of June and I haven’t managed to do any more Scrapbooking! How sad is that! I did manage to do a few more pages while I was there though so I will add those photos for you to look at.
This week has gone so fast. C1 and D1 left for Fiji last Sunday to go to Rob and Libs wedding. I stayed home and played ‘Mum’. And…I loved it! Although I must admit I am feeling tired. Actually, I wake up tired! But that’s not unusual for me. I’ve been like that for years. My Mum gets sick of hearing me say ‘I’m so tired’. She is 84 and I am sure she has more energy than me!
Every morning G3 and I walked Rosie to school and once G3 was safely in class, I walked Rosie around the BIG block back home. At least I was getting some exercise along with Rosie. I cooked the meals, did the groceries, washed the clothes, did baking and even had time to do some gardening. I had fun! I love filling up the green waste bin so when it is collected it is full!
G3 had swimming on Tuesday, Jazz on Friday and Dance practice on Saturday. G1 had work 3 times during the week so that meant a few trips to the train station as well. But every evening once G3 was in bed I got time to do Scrapbooking. I aim to get a page completed every evening. As I only have 4 collections of papers, I have to be pretty creative so that the pages don’t all look the same. I also have limited supplies over here in Sydney, so try to just use the products that I brought over with me.
I still have 8 days left so who knows how many more pages I will achieve. C1 and D1 arrive home in the late afternoon. I plan to have a lovely welcome home lamb roast for dinner with roast potato kumera and pumpkin! Yum!
Attached are some photos from the week 🙂
One of the photos is about grief. This week has also been a very sad week for me, although also a celebration of life as well. How??? I had a grandchild die while only 4 months in her Mummy’s womb. We were told a week earlier that there was something wrong and her little heart just stopped beating.
Lillianna had a rare chromosone disorder called triploidy. Her life expectancy would have been short and possibly may not have even survived out of the womb. We were all very excited to know that her Mummy was pregnant and couldn’t wait to meet our new little grand daughter…and we still will, but it will be in heaven.
If you want to read more about Lilliannas condition, click on the link below.
http://www.rarechromo.org/information/other/triploidy%20ftnw.pdf
We will always remember our little Lillianna xoxoxo
So here it is 9am and I am still in bed! I could blame it on the fact that it is a cold morning, I have a cough, and I have had about 4 nights of broken sleep because of that cough (mainly a tickly throat) but really I am just being lazy! Not normally one of my character traits but today it is the main one! And…I actually have a lot to do!
Yesterday I spent the day sewing. It was a cold, wet and thundery day so a good day to sew. I was determined to finish the quilts that I had started, and I did!
Today I start my new job. Yes…I have a new job. What an amazing answer to prayer! I had a phone call from a friend wondering if I would like some work. Like!!!! I would love it! So I am now a receptionist at Phoenix Emergency Doctors on Vivian Street, New Plymouth. I don’t officially start until the middle of June, but this afternoon I am going to learn what I will be expected to do. I am feeling really happy and can’t wait to use my skills again. Don’t get me wrong, I love being at home, but I kinda feel like I aren’t using my brain to the same extent…and I don’t want to lose the ability to work intellectually. I hope that makes sense! I want to be stretched mentally!
So today I have new job orientation, tomorrow I have friends coming over for the afternoon, Friday Joanna graduates so it is celebration time, and Saturday we travel to Palmerston North for Christians 4th Birthday.
Better get out of bed and start moving!
Came home a week ago to beautiful weather although definitely colder than when I left for Sydney. It’s lovely to be back home but I do miss my Sydney family. Just as well they need me to look after the grand daughters again…I am going back over on the 30th of May until the 17th of June…another 18 days!
I’ve been such a busy girl though since I got back home. I have pruned trees, mowed lawns, made jam, baked, helped to clean out Mum and Dads house(they have moved to Airport Drive and their house is now for sale!), celebrated Mother’s Day, been to church and home group, and entertained!! Phew!!!
Today I invited a few friends over for a cuppa and catch up. Decided it was an opportunity to do some spoiling by making it High Tea. I am lucky enough to be looking after Mums beautiful bone china tea sets, and I just HAD to use them. I try to be so gentle with them as I would hate to break one. They really are so special. It certainly makes the morning tea extra nice. I also made cup cakes, shortbread and scones with jam and cream! I have also added photos of my crab apples and the jam I made with them. If you haven’t tried crab apple jelly, you should! it’s a lovely jam that is sweet but yet tart!
Have a look! Doesn’t it all look yummy!
Today is Saturday…only one more full day left in Sydney. I fly home very early Monday morning! And….I have had a fabulous time here with my two grand daughters. D2 came back from Singapore last Monday and we have had a lovely week together as well, although she developed a very sore leg, with the pain radiating from her heel. After a late night trip to the emergency department of the hospital and a scan of her legs, Deep Vein Thrombosis was not the cause but Rebecca is now on anti-biotics and seems to be getting better.
I have still managed to do scrapbooking every evening and have a few more pages to add. I am loving having time to scrapbook and not feel that I should be doing other home maintenance jobs with my time. I hope that I have spent enough quality time with the girls as well, and they don’t feel that I have neglected them while I am busy scrapping 🙂
Here’s the pages…
This is going to be a very long and emotional blog update to write.
Way back in September last year we got a new manager in our little Waitara Branch of the ANZ, and from that moment my work life changed dramatically!
I had been working at the bank for 8 years. I was initially employed as a casual and have continued to work on a job share basis, with differing work hours. For approximately 3 years I worked one week on and then my job share lady worked the next week. This was fantastic for being able to spend time with my grandchildren. I would get a weekend then a week and then another weekend off…that makes 9 days off work, and then 5 days back working. I also upfront led the childrens music ministry program called mainly music every Tuesday morning, so the time off gave me hours to spend in preparation and planning. I love my work hours!
The next 3 years I have worked a different time schedule…My job share lady worked Mon, Tues and Wednesday and I worked Thursday and Friday. Not quite so easy for time away, but still very good….in fact I felt blessed! Two days work a week was great to plan around, and the income was fantastic for purchasing products for my ‘little’ hobby…Scrapbookin ! And….I was a great staff member. Seldom did I not balance. I was acurate with figures and money. I knew all the computer programs. I had developed great relationships with the customers and over the 8 years I had had only 5 days off on sick leave…with 2 of them being domestic leave. I also got on well with the other staff members and the managers, up until this new one…but eventually I realised that she was just doing what she had been trained to do!
Changes in our work environment started to appear when the ANZ decided to drop the National Bank Branding, and just become one ‘Super Bank’. As we had a vacancy in the Managers role in Waitara the position was filled with a lady who came from an ANZ Bank. Immediately we noticed a difference in work ethic! The emphasis on sales was huge! Now I do understand that any business needs to be able to make a profit. If I ran a business I would expect a return for my investment! But the whole focus became a focus of looking for opportunity for a sale with every customer. We were to look for prompts to begin a discussion on how we could promote a sale based on the customers financial circumstances. We they going on holiday? Then travel cards, travel insurance and maybe a savings account were suggested options for the customer. Etc..Etc…You see if I was able to ‘sell’ on of these products, I could log it in as a sale….and if I met my sales target for the year…I would get my annual bonus!!! I initially reacted badly against all the changes and the way the new manager forced the sale talk on me every work day. I felt I would be rude to the customers to try to on-sale them every time they just came into the bank to either just bank some money or withdraw some funds. Eventually….the pressure to meet my sales targets and be a good employee paid off and I began to change my attitude to comply with my employers demands. They were paying my wages after all.
I managed to get my sales target up to 93% before the end of the financial year. Not quite enough for the bonus, but a huge improvement from where I was at 37%. If I hadn’t taken holidays and gone to visit family in Sydney over Easter I may have even managed to get the last 7%, but time spent with family was and is really important to me.
However, during the time from September until March this year my job share lady was suffering hugely. The demands from our new manager and the pressure from her to ‘get on board’ with the changes, came across a bullying. My job share lady got sick and every time she came to work she felt the stress of work pressure and management demands too much to cope with. She ended up on stress leave and sick leave, and finally at the beginning of March, she realised that she could no longer continue to work for ANZ. She handed in her resignation! I then realised that I had only one month left of my job under the job share contract. The contract ended with one of us resigning. The New Plymouth manager came out to see me and the offer was full time work. I declined that offer as I don’t want to be a fulltime worker at 56 years of age…and I have never worked full time with the ANZ/National bank and it has always been acceptable. I asked the manager if there could possibly be any other offers of work. I and another employee would be happy to continue to work the job share hours and I asked if the Bank would be interested in that option. He said he would get back to me, and also let me know what the actual final day of my contract would be.
I proceeded to go to Sydney for Easter having had no further communications from the New Plymouth Manager, and my branch Manager was on annual leave in Hong Kong. I emailed the New Plymouth Manager before I left New Zealand and then again before I left Sydney. He answered the last email and said he would come and see me when I am back at work. I arrived in New Zealand on the Wednesday and went to work Thursday and Friday. On Thursday the New Plymouth Manager called in in his lunch hour to talk to me. He said that the offer had been made to me for fulltime work and I declined it. I asked if there were any other positions available that I could work…his answer was ‘an offer has been made to you and you decined it’ He then asked if I could carry on working until a replacement is found for me. I questioned how I could keep working when my contract had finished? Everyone needs an employment contract. My job share ladies final day was Monday the 8th of April. Thursday was the 5th of April. He said he would get back to me by the Monday and possibly by Friday. I worked all day Friday and got a phone call from him at 4.40pm. The doors shut at 4.30 and we were still busy doing the end of day close procedures. Thank God we balanced and had no difficulties in closing the branch.
He immediately advised me that the bank had made me an offer and I declined it. He wasn’t prepared to discuss other options at all. I asked him when my last day would be then. He said that I still had to work the next Thursday and Friday.
When I got home I looked up the contract and it read that the job contract would end on the final day of one of the job share people…so it ended on Monday the 8th. I emailed him to say that I would be finishing on Monday as per the contract and also wrote that it wasn’t my decision to leave the bank, and I was disappointed that they couldn’t find a position that worked for both the bank and myself. He had said many times that any new casual position would only be open to a person that was prepared to eventually become a full time employee. This means that the ANZ bank was not open to full time workers reducing their hours at any time. Trained staff that left the bank would not be offered any further employment, unless they wanted another fulltime position. How does that work for young woman who have a family and want to reduce their working hours, or woman like me that are getting older and don’t want to work fulltime! I have never felt so sad about such an unreasonable attitude an employee can have.
So, I now am unemployed!
Thanks for nothing ANZ Bank!!!
I can’t believe how fast the last year went! Who would believe that we are now heading towards the middle of January 2013 already!
Well….life is great! I had a fabulous Christmas and even managed a week in Sydney with C1, D1, G1 and G3 (and had a night out with C4 and D3). Robin and the girls were also in Sydney for Christmas day so we had a lovely family time. C6 and I had to fly back home on Boxing Day because I had to work the next 2 days and C6 had booked to go to ‘Rhythm and Vines’ music festival.
Since being back home I have had Simon and the 2 boys staying plus C4 and D3 came to stay for about 5 nights as well. We tried to do as much as possible together for those 5 days. C3 left and went up to Hamilton where he is going to be best man for his friends wedding, and C4 and D3 flew back to Sydney. I still have my 2 grandsons staying and have been having so much fun with them.
Robin and C5 got back home on the 6th of January and both have been working again this week. Life is slowly getting back to normal and that means routine!
C5 turns 21 on the 15th so the next big event will be her birthday dinner. Luckily for me, she has booked her party at a local venue so I won’t have to be preparing food.
My crafting life has had to be put on hold during the Christmas season, but I have plenty of photos printed out ready for when time once again becomes available. I can’t wait! One thing that I have managed to fit in though is shifting a heap of my very old photos from their old unsafe photo albums, to new albums that are acid free. I purchased lots of photo life pages from ‘Simon Says’ and have found them a very quick way of getting the photos into albums and yet making them slightly more interesting than just plain photo albums. I have a long way to go before finishing them, but I am very happy with the progress so far.
I also made a few crafty things for gifts and also for selling in my sisters craft shop. I will attach some photos!
I will also add some photos of my fabulous family and of our time together celebrating our Saviours birthday 🙂
Marysias parents are lovely and their home is amazing! They made us feel so welcome! We visited 2 castles (or palaces) near their home. One by car and the other we biked 8kms to and then 8kms back home. What a laugh! I loved it and am determined to buy myself a bike when I get back home. Robin and I, or Judy and I can bike our walkway every week! We need to get fit and lose all this extra weight we have put on! We were at Marysias place when they had a party to celebrate 35 years of marriage. It was a suprise party and was a fabulous evening! We also visited Poznan and walked through the town square, wher Marysia spent most of her university time. She loves Poznan and it brought back many happy memories for her 🙂
You have to see this place to believe it! And then you probably won’t want to ever go there again. I can’t believe that humans could be so cruel and inhumane to other humans! We did the tour of the camp in the town where horrific things were done and then the Consentration Camp hidden away from public eye…the place where so many people were killed and tortured and lived in disgusting conditions! People arrived here in train carriages..thinking they were being relocated to a ‘better place’ only to be immediately separated from loved ones, elderly people sorted out along with the sick and handicapped, and then the women and children. Most of the latter were gased and cremated straight away. It is so horrible to think about! But it is now history and we must never forget these dreadful things that were done and never let them ever happen again!
Our Wednesday morning scrapbooking is going well. We manage to create 3 pages each time we are together and we also eat way too much food. I am sure the extra 5 kilos I am carrying around at the moment comes from our Wednesdays. it’s like a party each week! But I love scrapbooking. If I do a layout that I really love I will do it again with different papers. It will usually end up in a different album anyway so you would probably never see the pages together. I purchased a kit called ‘Sidewalks’ from ‘October Afternoon’ and have made lots of pages from the fabulous paper already. I have also used up nearly all of another kit called ‘Life is good’ from ‘Echo Park’. ‘Everyday Enchartment’ from ‘Stampin Up’ has also been a favourite of mine. Those kits are well worth buying! I leave my new pages on display to admire until I take a photo and file them away into the correct album. If you like scrapbooking I hope my pages can inspire you too 🙂
