Because I love you...

I bought Kasey Chambers' new CD yesterday and when I got to the car I popped it straight in. I love her music and I love the new CD. Much to my delight I found that there was a secret song at the end of the album. The lyrics are so beautiful.

Mix all my words up and say it all wrong

Don't see enough, but I stare way to long.

These are the stupid things that I do 'cause I love you.

This is exactly how I am feeling. Completely besotted, stupidly in love and crazy about the man I call my husband. Oh, to be so blessed!!

Sunny summer dress

It seems that I have got a real little princess on my hands. Little miss Anja is refusing to wear anything but dresses and skirts and after day upon day of fights in the morning I have given in and made her a whole stack of skirts and a dress so that she can wear something twirly everyday of the week.

I have made the circle skirt and the market skirt, both found on Dana's blog and they were so easy and quick to sew. I set myself the challenge to use only fabric out of my stash so the only money I spend was some wide elastic that came to a total of $5.

By far my favourite princess outfit thought, is this little dress that made today out of fabric I bought last year from the remnants bin. I made it following this tutorial and I just love the fullness of the skirt and the shirring in the back. Obviously, my princess loves it, but then what little girl doesn't love a twirly dress, in bright sunshine yellow?

Better

Little Miss Anja has always worried me. Out of the 3 kids she felt the death of her Pappa so violently that it shook ever part of her being and displayed itself in every way possible. Everyday I would lift her up to Jesus (as I do with all my children) and ask that He would carry her through and bring her out stronger on the other side. Everyday I did all I could to show her love and to help her through.

And while I still pray for her daily and fear for her in this world, I now believe that she is starting to do better. I know because she is sleeping, she has finally starting to manage to make it to the toilet on time and she is laughing real belly laughs again.

I also know because her drawings have changed. For a long time she just drew pictures of sad things or really scary things. Lately though, people are always smiling and there are lots of princesses and butterflies and sunshine in her pictures. She drew these today. If you can't tell, that is me next to our house and the one below is the dog next to its kennel. I think they are just too cute.

And then this one put a real big smile on my face. Its a picture of me and Adrian and a love heart "because you really like him Mamma". There is also a picture of my engagement ring, a toadstool and a butterfly and down the bottom she wrote her name (in mirror image) and drew a picture of herself.

Slowly-but-surely she is starting to come out the other side. I don't believe that her grief is by any stretch of the imagination over, but at least for right now, she is coping better. And I praise God for that!!

Foiled Plans

I woke this morning with a long list of plans for the day. I was going to sew some summer skirts for my girl who is refusing to wear pants, finish digging and planting the front garden and have a picnic with the kids. Non of that happened. I'll show you why:

Snow!!

In the middle of October! Right here in town, after we've had a week of warm sunny weather that made me hopeful that I could finally pack our winter clothes away.

The kids thought it was great and had so much fun.

Broken

I often dig around this blog and her writing often has me laughing, but more often leaves me in tears. Powerful, scary and oh, so, real.

Her latest post is simply a quote from Ernest Hemingway. It says:

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”

May it also be true about me.

Still not over

I just got off a phone call from WorkCover. I get these 'update' phone calls every so often to tell me where the process is up to. Every time it's the same thing: the investigation is in progress. We still don't know what the final outcome will be.

Little does the person on the other end of the line know how much these calls upset me. Little does she know that she manages to shatter a perfectly fine day by reminding me, yet again that Jouke is dead and that I might yet have to face court to pin criminal charges on people that I consider friends.

Its the same way I am rattled by paperwork and banks and solicitors. Last week I filed paperwork to claim outstanding long service leave and for the first time in a long time, I had to write his name again. I was physically shaking by the end. The same way I was shaking after an appointment with the solicitor to update our wills. He was casually asking about what would happen should we die one day.

Like the one day, that came to soon.

I am terrified will come too soon again.

Death is messy, its ugly and it follows you. Even on sunny days, when all else is fine, it manages to rattle you to the core and remind you of the fragility of life.

Adjusting

Not so many months ago I remember talking to a friend about Jouke's death and how we were coping. I remember telling her that one of the hardest changes that I had to make was a shift in language. In an effort to help my brain to except the death of my spouse I forced myself to start referring to things as mine and to use me and I. What a struggle! I constantly kept on referring to our, us and we. And ever time I did use me or mine I would feel the pain of loss again.

It did however, over time, become normal. I got used to being me and referring to my house, my bed, my car. In part, it was rebellion. Maybe even pride. Like a 'watch-me-do-it-alone' attitude. I hated being alone, going alone, doing alone, but I was slowly adjusting to that and in small ways (very small ways) loved the freedom to choose, like what I watched on TV.

Thing is, now that I am married again, I am finding that I have to adjust back again to us, we, ours. I love it, but for some reason it has taking a while for me to fully get my head around it. Finally, gladly it is our house, our car, our bed! My head will just take a minute to catch up.