Snoskred - Life in the Country

Today Pearl from Interesting Observations is guest posting here at the blog. I was lucky enough to meet Pearl via the US Blogs Community, I love her blog, and she was also one of the first people I thought of when I considered asking for guest posters.

I am supposedly on a vacation this week! Just before the Labor day on September 3rd, which falls on a Monday this year, taking a week off means it essentially saves me some time and make up a nice ten day vacation. In the few days before leading up to this much sought after time I switched into sort of a crunch mode and did what I normally do in a week. I was able to finish most of the lose ends to all the projects I was working on and even cleaned up the desk of extra papers, tidied up the place and re-arranged pictures and what not. Prepared my to-do list for the week I go back to work. Updated the boss on all of the projects.

Yesterday (Tuesday) meaning the 2nd official vacation day, my boss calls me on my cell phone! I see his name on the screen and froze up! My heart started sinking for a few seconds. No I don’t hate my boss. As a matter of fact, I’ve got the best boss you could ask for. When I am there, he hardly ever comes over to my little cube and bother. But its only when I am NOT there that he panics! Why is that? I was in a fix for a few seconds if I should or should not answer the phone!

I decided I couldn’t answer his call and let it to voice mail. At the time he called I was about to order my lunch - was with a few friends at a diner on the shore - good hour and a half away from home. Only listened to the message after my lunch. Turns out he was panicking because of some adverse impact in employment inquiry from the feds. I could feel the tension in his voice but I was not going to cut my vacation short and go into office to help him out, even if I was closer to the office. I returned his call after lunch and although he apologized for disturbing me on vacation, he started asking other questions relating to a project I had worked on. It is a difficult situation for me, I hate to receive phone calls of this nature while I am on vacation, but at the same time I do not want to be rude and unreachable because after all its just a matter of two weeks and after the vacation, we will have to spend most of my days at the job!

So what would you do if you were in a similar situation? I can’t think of anything other than what I did although there is that uncomfortable feeling about all of this, not just that he called, also that if I was there, he wouldn’t be so tense about it. But as I was rationalising, I would do everything possible to not have to call him while he is on vacation. Although he leaves his cell phone, hotel phone numbers with the entire team when he is away!

And how about if you are a boss, would you call up your employee on vacation? Under what circumstance you absolutely would call up your employee?
And if not, why not?

Thanks Pearl for allowing me to post this, and thanks for taking the time to write it. Me personally, I would never interrupt an employee’s holiday unless it was a matter of extreme urgency. However my Dad is the employer and he genuinely wants his employees to call him when he’s away if there are any issues - he has trouble getting them to do this.

What do the rest of my readers think? What would you do in a situation like that?

I’ll be back tomorrow with an update on all things Snoskred. How’s the move going? Has Snoskred managed to stay organised in the midst of chaos? Is her desktop cluttered with icons again? How did the back light tower of the Ute (pick up truck for ye Americans) get broken? Has Snoskred managed to go for a beack walk yet? All these questions and possibly more will be answered in tomorrow’s post.

River is a regular commentor here on the blog but does not have a blog of her own. When I knew I’d be moving I sat down and thought - who would I like to guest post on the blog? River was one of the first people I thought of. Please take a moment to show River some comment love - she shows us plenty on a regular basis but we usually can’t return it so now is your chance!

My first husband was in the Army. Between 1972 and 1986 we moved house 6 times. You’d think it would be hard, but no, the Army made it all sooo easy. K. would come home and announce he had been posted to a new area. The very next day he would go off to work and I would start cleaning walls and doors.

A few days later the inventory pages would arrive. That’s right- pages, plural. 11 of them. EVERY SINGLE THING WE OWNED had to be listed along with the condition and approximate value. This is where I discovered that we owned 2 dozen unused wine glasses and 500 books. Furniture items had to be closely examined and every nick , dent and stain written in the available space. Then there were the personal items, clothes, toys etc. Here we had to estimate how many boxes we would need to pack all these into. So I went merrily about the house, spending about ½ a day per room, listing everything.

At the end I thought I had done a pretty good job and walked around patting myself on the back. Until K. pointed out that several of the items listed to go in the truck were items that we needed to take with us in the car. The pram, the highchair, the 4 dozen nappies. I crossed them off the inventory. The pages were submitted and a moving date was set.

The day before the move the packers arrived. Yes, packers. 4 hefty looking women who packed up Army families for a living. I watched, astounded, as they packed up my entire house in mountains of paper and stuffed everything into large sturdy cardboard cartons, in LESS than ½ a day!!. I didn’t have to do a thing except make cups of tea for them.

We spent the night in a cheap motel, paid for by the Army. This was part of the moving process. A cost was estimated on number of family members, to be used for motel accomodation and meals also an allowance for petrol. Early next morning the truck arrived, loaded up and vanished. We drove to Sydney from Brisbane. Although, since I never learnt to drive it was up to K. to get us there safely.

We arrived in Sydney 2 days later and spent a week in a motel. K. went off to work every morning and I was left alone in a city I didn’t know, with 2 babies, minimal clothes and toys and hour of daylight to get through. We managed to have fun anyway although I can’t remember now what we did.

Then we learned a house in the suburbs had been assigned to us, all the way out in Glenfield, past Liverpool. K. was working at the Watson’s Bay base. Hours and hours of travelling for him, leaving at the crack of dawn and getting home in time to kiss the babies goodnight. So we settled in. another baby came along and No.1 child started school.

Then K. came home one day and announced he had accepted a posting to a new area. And the whole process was begun again. Only this time the inventory list was easier. I’d kept a copy of the previous one and only had to transfer stuff we still had, add new things acquired, and omit stuff we had gotten rid of. Simple, really.

The process was repeated several times in the next few years as we moved from Sydney to Melbourne, back to Sydney, back again to Melbourne etc. Eventually we settled in Adelaide where K’s military career came to an end. After so many years in such a structured lifestyle, “free” life was so much different and many adjustments needed to be made.

Looking back on those years now, I’m surprised at how well the children handled it. Every couple of years they were uprooted, leaving friends, changing schools, making new friends, and they did it all (mostly) cheerfully, with few complaints and in later moves even packing and unpacking their own personal items alongside the professional packers. They thought it was fun to live in a motel for a week or so at a time while waiting for a house to be assigned.

They watched a lot of tv it’s true, but they also saw a lot of different areas and made many friends, some of whom my oldest keeps in touch with even now. I’m still in Adelaide now, the chidren are grown and gone from home, K. and I divorced years ago. All in all, it was a happy life, that’s just the way things were, getting on with it seemed the best thing to do. I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

Thanks for allowing me to post this, River. I am very grateful you agreed to guest post because I wanted to know more about you and I know I’m not the only one. What a wonderful guest post showing a different kind of life in this broad brown land we call Australia.

I’ll be back tomorrow with an update on the state of the packing which is going very well, even though I don’t have the burly army ladies to help! Of course on Sunday there’s the weekly wrap up.

Dorothy from Grammology has only been blogging for a mere 8 months but you would never believe it from looking at her site. She had contacted me via email on a day I’d received about 100 emails and been completely overwhelmed by it.

About a week later she sent me a follow up email and that was a much slower email day, so I took the time to check out her site and loved what I saw. I immediately replied asking her to guest post for me and within a short time Dorothy sent me back a fully written article - here it is!

In January of 2007 I started our blog Grammology.. Within a few months I began reading different blogs and posting comments to get traffic and links for my site. There was so much to learn as I had never been exposed to blogs before this. All I knew was I had a dream, to share information with parents and children regarding my life as a mother, grandmother, wife, and friend. I was 60 years old at the time (just turned 61 in July) and felt I didn’t have much time left, if I was ever going to do this. While I was commenting, I was also learning. My inexperience and lack of formal education never stopped me. Maybe it should have, however, it didn’t.

Over the last few years I had asked several friends and family if they wanted to venture with me to get this project going. No one was interested. Back to the dream come true…. Finally I met Linda, a friend in my industry … She liked what she heard, and we began discussing how to launch my idea for grandma’s in today’s life.

Within a few months Linda’s son who was a full time college student suggested blogging as way to get our message out. Miles is solely responsible for the success of our blog and its layout. . Meanwhile, he was trying to be a 21 year old college student, with a life; instead he placed much of it on hold to help his mother and I get started. The site is a work in progress and hats off to him for his patience with two green ladies regarding the internet. In other words, if we can do it…so can you…

Liz who works for Linda’s as an illustrator, came up with the icon of me…I hate to admit this, but I like it… I had been looking at coffee pots, cups etc. Her idea seems to be much better than mine.
In the beginning I made a lot of mistakes, never understood how comments and blogs should be bookmarked or saved. Wasn’t always able to return to a site I’d previously visited. I recommend to keep trying, each time you’re on the web, you get better. My dream is happening, I’m writing and sharing and people are commenting. It’s rewarding, exciting and fun. There’s no one to tell me what to write. I try to think of subjects, I’ve experienced and share the good, bad and the ugly. Everyone and anyone can do it… That’s what’s so good about the web.

Back to the dream come true. When I found the site, Life in the country, I liked what I read, and knew it would be a favorite and I’d needed to visit more before I would see everything. As you read blogs you become amazed at the information given. All you need to be is willing to learn. And oddly enough she had a post on writing better…. (Hope I’m following her rules. Or at least improving) I read it and I know it has improved my writing. I always try to learn something and do better.

So, I sent an email to Snoskred and told her how enjoyable I thought her blog was. And here is my second and unexpected dream come true……. She checked out my blog, sent me an email, which was a miracle. And asked me if I was interested in guest posting on her site? Is she kidding, this is the biggest thing that’s happened to me since I started blogging. Of course I do…

Now the pressure is immense. Will I make the grade? Is admitting to the world of bloggers another dream came true important to anyone else? And would my subject be interesting? Now I know what is must feel like to speak to a large audience. Better have Imodium… I’ll do it and then I’ll pray…you like it?

The question, do you care about other people’s dreams? And what are yours? I’m a testimony you’re never too old, never too inexperienced. Just do it. There’s nothing worse than an unopened gift. And who knows you may be that gift. And if where’re lucky… you’ll take a chance do it, and find a Snoskred and your dream will come true.

So here we are, and you’re reading about another one of my dreams coming true. I hope you enjoyed my sharing and will tell us about some of your dreams and if you are still waiting or they’ve come true.

I believe that if you have a dream you can reach out for it. My recent dream was to move to a new place in our dream location. It took a long time and was a heartbreaking journey to get there but I never gave up. After each stretch of reaching for the dream and missing it by mere centimetres I just became more determined to grasp it. And here I am moving.

Each of us have unlimited potential but often we tell ourselves “Don’t dream, it won’t happen, you’ll only get hurt, why try?” If you don’t try you’ll never know. I already have a new dream which I’ll be keeping you up to date about in the following months.

I have learnt a lot about myself over the past year and now I know I can do anything I set my mind to - it’s just a matter of giving it everything I have to get there.

Dorothy, thank you so much for writing this guest post! If you have not seen Grammology yet please drop by and take a look. I love the icon, it is gorgeous. I love the blog template you’re using there, too!