Lousy week, lousy news

It hasn't been the best week this week - we have all been suffering from summer colds in this household - congestion, watery eyes, coughs, and blocked ears, and just generally feeling miserable. It worse when WE all are feeling lousy.

Yesterday I also got some lousy news at work too - it seems that my job at school is no longer as secure as I thought it was. The general aides in school, and those aides in Special schools have all now got permanent hours for the next three years, but it turns out, that if you are a special education Teacher Aide, your hours are still flexible. Well it just so happens that even though I haven't been in special ed now for 12 months, I am still attached to special Ed, and when the school looses hours, they can't take them off the general aides, the only place they can be taken from is the special ed aides, and the general aides will have to do their work., because the assigned hours wll still need to be done in Special Ed. Their new agreement is for three years which means that in the next three years, we could end up with barely any hours. It seems that only the special ed aides missed out in this new round of Enterprise Bargaining.

The other sad news I got was that even if the girl I am replacing comes back, I won't necessarily get the job, as deployees, transferees, and existing aides who want to maximise hours, all have first go before I am even allowed to apply. It all just seems so unfair and there is not a thing we can do about it. As hard as it has been this week, I know that I just need to hand this over to God, because otherwise I just get so angry about the whole thing, and really in the great scheme of things, it is rather a miracle that I am working where I am at the moment so I just need to trust that if this is where God wants me to stay than he will open the doors to allow that to happen - at least then I will know that it is nothing that I can do - it is all about God providing.


This was also my final week with my Uni job and that has left a huge gaping hole in our lives - it was so hard to hit the send button on the email I sent them this week for "early separation". The process has already begun now to cut off our links to the Uni - I have had to get a new email address - think about changing my super, change private health care cover, as I am no longer under the Corporate VIP rate - that use to save us quite a few dollars a month. It has just been a really lousy week and being sick has not helped.

On a brighter note - I spent today sewing with a friend. My friend Ann and I usually scrapbook today - she has had a really busy 6 months as their only daughter got married two weeks ago. Last year we decided we were going to book days up to have some creative friends time together, so we put today's date in our dairy 3 months ago and we got together today to make Christmas stockings for next Christmas - we are getting organised.

When my older two kids were young I made them each a patchwork Christmas stocking, but I never seemed to get around to making one for Chloe. Well today I started making one for both Chloe and our son in law Colin -they are not finished yet. The girls from church are having a weekend at the beach in a couple of weeks time, so Ann and I are taking our stockings to do all the hand sewing and sew all the embellishments on it. Will post a photo when they are finished.
Anyway, I thought I would share a few photos from our sewing day today - we mightn't have managed to scrapbook, but we were creative and we patchworked instead.

Ironing as we go

Plenty of fabric to choose from
This machine is in for a bit of a shock - it has only ever sewn paper before


Busy at work.
This is the shell of my stocking - have already sewn ribbons and lace on it and it is starting to look good - will definately show you the finished product in the next few weeks.

To end just a coulpe of quotes I found today

Hem your blessings with thankfulness so they don't unravel. ~Author Unknown

Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. ~Simone Signoret

Good friends are like quilts - they age with you yet never lose their warmth. ~Author Unknown

and finally

A cheerful heart is good medicine... Proverbs 17:22

I need to remember this verse this week and put it into practice. Talk to you all again soon.