Where has the year gone? I ask myself every year at about this time.

I was just reading my most recent blog post (apart from the Angelina Jolie garage sale reblog the other week) from SIX months ago…where I said, “…I’m clearer now about what I want this blog to be. So here’s to my renewed focus!” Blah blah blah.

Winter and almost all of Spring have passed since I wrote that sentence, and the new blog focus has clearly not manifested.

So what have I been doing? Plotting and planning for The Alexcellent Life, figuring out the best way to structure my actual life,which – I’ll let you in on a little secret – is sometimes the mediocre life rather than The Alexcellent life – but we have to have something to aspire to! There’s parenting, my school-hours job, any freelance work, other business ideas, family time, extended family time, social time, life-admin, house maintenance, and just the business of living.

I will sum up the past few months with a visual retrospective of what I didn’t blog about…

Winter in Bondi is magical

My soccer from the sidelines view

Book week costume. All you need is cardboard! #craftisfun

Exciting work trip to Melbourne.

Bondi laughs

Meeting the llamas at a friend’s place just outside Canberra. I’m pretty sure they were all named after hot beverages

Sydney in Winter sparkles

He’s king of the hill and top of the heap down in downtown Gowrie, ACT. Who needs New York?

My first Mt.Taylor climb since moving back to Canberra

Took in the winter-wonderlandiness of Skate in the City at Garema Place

Trying to stick to my training regimen

Jumping a train to Sydney with some little friends along for the ride

I love the contemporary classical lines of the National Library

My oldest friend from school by my side made it a lot easier to front up to the school reunion. This one made school so much better!

I also didn’t blog about:

• My 30-year high-school reunion which I was nervous about going to but turned out not to be so bad. In fact I’m really glad I went. It was great to reconnect and realise that those girls are just real people and we’ve all had our share of knocks
• Lots of joy in the ordinary, but also a decent amount of worry, tiredness, and frustration
• Flu for Spider Boy and me
• The passing of Spider Boy’s grandfather, my-ex’s dad
• Lots of work. Work work, housework, personal work
• Bill juggling, haggling and staggering
• 9am Sunday morning soccer in Winter
• Several Sydney visits as well as visitors from Sydney
• Plotting, planning, thinking, consolidating.
• NO Tinder-swiping which has been a big fat relief

I have loads more photos on my phone but my old MacBook already has so many photos on it that it really struggles to cope with more.  Otherwise I’d show you more pics here.  I really need to buy a hard-drive or something.

So that’s where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. So I’m not going to talk about things like “my renewed focus”. I often think about something my year 3 teacher from 1978 said.  I can’t remember her name, but I remember her well. Our class motto was “Don’t say it, do it!”

And that is exactly what I will do.