P365 - Day 354 - on the bus (and the year in review 1/12)

Juniordwarf doesn’t travel on buses very often, so he gets very excited whenever he gets the chance for a bus trip.

The first few times, he sat right up the front in the seat behind the bus driver. If you haven’t sat in that set before, let me tell you that there is not much leg room for anyone bigger than, well, a school kid.

After that wore off, he decided that sitting down the back was more fun, as was having an entire seat to himself and moving between seats during the trip.

Today we decided to go into town to do some shopping and meet Santa. Last year, rather than park in town, we went on Hobart Council’s shopper shuttle service where you can park at the Regatta Ground and catch a free shuttle bus into the city. Even though it was only a five minute ride, Juniordwarf loved the fact that we went on the bus.

He was very keen to do it again this year, so we did.

On the way in, he sat up the back.

On the way back he sat on one of the side-facing seats, which he was particularly taken with, because we were ‘going sideways’. So that was a bit different. (He’d also been fascinated, on his class visit to the Transport Museum recently, how some people sit facing backwards in a train.)

We saw Santa, he had an ice cream and we got some shopping done.

I think he enjoyed himself.

And now for something completely different. This:

2011 in review: Month 1/12

Since my Project 365 is rapidly coming to an end - there are 12 days left - I'm going post a link to my favourite post from each month since the start of the year over those 12 days.

Today, we return to January, and one of my very first blog posts. 

It’s about an event that I was terrified of attending, and very nearly didn’t, but was so glad I did because it helped me to believe in myself and my ability to go out and talk to people. I think that going set me up for a lot of the changes I’ve made over the course of the year.

http://sleepydwarf.blogspot.com/2011/01/p365-day-8-tweetup-812011.html

Tomorrow: February

P365 - Day 238 - something is missing

One of the things my counsellor told me was that I have to take a little bit of time to do things purely for myself without feeling guilty about it.

So to cut a long story short, I decided to take a day off work (and not eat into the ever diminishing time I get to spend with Juniordwarf now he’s at school). The plan was to go shopping (my work wardrobe is in serious need of a makeover and my lunch break isn’t long enough to do any 'proper' shopping), drink coffee and have a massage.

Brilliant idea, right?

Actually I rather detest shopping. It’s hard to find clothes that fit me – everything in the shops seems either designed for skinny young things or the more, um, ‘matronly’ types, and I don’t identify with either. As a result, I normally find shopping a rather stressful, unpleasant experience.

A coupe of weeks ago I put a call out on Twitter to try and find places where a (ahem) ‘curvy short chick’ might find clothes that don’t fit into either of the above categories. I got a few suggestions and decided to go for it.

I figured if worst came to worst, I could call a halt to the shopping and go on a photo walk. Or drink more coffee.

It sounded like a plan. 

Only when I got into town this morning I discovered that I’d left my wallet at home!

Now who heads out for a shopping trip without their wallet? Turns out I’m not the only one, and I had a few people on Twitter tell me how they’d done exactly the same thing.

Luckily Slabs was with me when I realised what I’d done, calmed me down, escorted me to the ATM and gave me cash.

I went to the coffee shop, ordered a coffee, caught up on a few blogs (one in particular cheered me up immensely) and, revived, headed out to shop.

It was a mostly successful outing. My work wardrobe is looking slightly more professional and, without the time pressures of having to go back to work, I didn’t hate it as much as I feared I might have.

The strangest thing was paying for everything in cash. I normally card almost everything I buy, and the feeling of handing over actual money for things over about $10 or $20 was just weird. But I think it also kept me in check a bit, because I could see how much I was spending, rather than adding it up at the end of the day.

Sa here is today’s photo – the inside of my bag. Camera - check. Lip gloss - check. Pen - check. Notepad - check. Fold-up shopping bag - check. Wallet - oops  . . . 

P365 - Day 205 - the scrapbooking shop is closed

Earlier this week I wrote about how Juniordwarf loves to describe the route to wherever we’re going in great detail. He does it in the car and he does it when we walk Sleepydog.

Yesterday when we were out walking with Sleepydog, Juniordwarf asked if we could walk to one of the streets we usually drive to. I said we could, but that it would be easier if we went without Sleepydog, since she’s not the easiest dog to walk.

He agreed with that, and this morning said he wanted to walk to that street, which is close to the centre of town, more than two kilometres from our house. I agreed and decided that since we were going that way we might as well do a couple of errands at the same time, to save someone driving.

So we set off, after me telling Slabs he might need to be on alert to come and pick us up if it got a bit much for Juniordwarf. Juniordwarf was very excited, setting out our route before we went, and telling me how we would also walk past the scrapbooking shop so he could see the sign in the window.

He has quite a thing for the ‘open’ and ‘closed’ signs displayed in various shop doors, and every time we drive past any of the shops that he’s become interested in (there are several regulars), he checks to see whether the shop is open or closed, whether the lights are on or off and whether the blinds are up or down.

The scrapbooking shop in our town is his main focus, but he’s also amused by the op shop next door (or in Juniordwarfspeak 'the dressing shop'), which has another sign in its door that partly obscures the ‘open/closed’ sign, giving the impression that the shop is either ‘pen’ or ‘losed’. This provides him with hours of entertainment.

When we got to the scrapbooking shop, he spent an amazing amount of time looking through the window ‘at the stuff’, and at the sign. A couple of people passing by gave us strange looks, and I wasn’t sure if they thought we might be casing the place (fingers crossed that the shop doesn’t get broken into any time soon, or Juniordwarf might receive a visit from the cops . . .).

He’s very excited because I’m going to print some photos of him and his best friend so that he can do his own scrapbooking page. I told him that once we get the photos he can pick out some paper from the shop to do his page, and he’s really looking forward to that.

Once I managed to drag him away from the shop, we did a tour down the main street, so he could examine the doors of all the other shops to see if they were open or closed, on the way to the DVD store to return some DVDs for Slabs.

Juniordwarf said he wanted to look at the numbers. Not being a regular in that shop, I had no idea what he meant, until he dragged me into the shop, to the wall where the top 100 DVDs are displayed. He then walked along that wall counting from one to one hundred (which Slabs says he’s done before), and then all the way back again counting back to one (which is a new development).

Then he was ready to go.

After another detour, we headed for home. We weren’t far from home when I noticed him lagging a bit. He said, ‘I need to be carried.’ 

I managed to convince him that he didn’t. My back would not have thanked me for lugging a four year old the rest of the way home. So we made it home under our own steam and I didn't need rescuing. All in all, about a five kilometre round trip.

Not a bad morning walk.