Dead Hard Drives, Sick Kids and General Malaise

Posting this pic because they make me smile (when they’re not driving me crazy), despite what else might be going wrong.

So I’ve not written here in a while. Now we’re well into February I thought it might be a good time to review my goals for the year and how things re going in general. Truth be told, I’ve not had a very good start to the year. Both kids were sick since new year for pretty much the whole of January. First we had the awful vomiting and fever virus. Then they both had nasty coughs (me too) which turned into a chest infection for Kiran. As soon as Maya would get well, Kiran would get sick and so the cycle continued. Now we’re all healthy, thankfully, but things continue to go wrong. My hard drive  crashed the other day, taking with it months of photos that I’d been lazy in backing up. The guy in the computer repair shop looked at me like I was incredibly stupid when I asked him if there was any way to retrieve the data. In fact by some miracle I did manage to get all my files back. A friend told me he’d heard that putting the hard drive in the freezer overnight could recover it for long enough to access the data. I googled it and found a whole lot of sites saying it was an urban myth and it would just make the damage worth but I thought what the hell, I have nothing to lose. Anyway, it WORKED. So if you’ve somehow arrived at this page after googling the same thing, it is NOT an urban myth, it does work!! So yep, got my files back and I’m happy about that. Still will need a new laptop a some point. Oh well.

Yeah so January has pretty much sucked. Due to sick kids being clingy during the day and waking up multiple times at night so I get no sleep, I’ve not been managing my early morning starts and I’ve been getting nothing done. I’m horribly behind on work, even more in debt than I was and generally going crazy. I literally feel like crawling out of my own skin some days. I’ve had moments where I feel like I’m suffocating inside and have to run out to get some air. Like I said – going crazy.

I know a big part of the problem is not getting out of the house enough. Or rather, not getting out of the house without children enough. Looking after these two 24 hours a day is enough to drive anyone crazy I tell you! It is tricky really, I don’t like going out between 10am-3pm ish (at least not with the kids) in the sun because it’s too hot so going for a quick walk is out of the question for most of the day. Mornings and afternoons are ok but they’re also the busiest time to get everyone bathed/fed/put to bed/sent to school/whatever. I need to learn to drive that motorbike so I can escape to somewhere in the day time because there’s certainly nowhere I can walk to without getting fried to a crisp.

So anyway, apart from being crazy, what else have I been up to?

De-cluttering has been happening slowly but steadily and I’m actually pretty much finished. The cupboards are cleaned out, the baby clothes are gone, the toys are packed away and in rotation and I’m doing pretty well about keeping it that way. I think we will call this one a success. I am still longing for some new furniture (and Maya definitely needs a new bed as she is half on the floor by the time morning comes around) and a fresh coat of paint but that I can wait. I already feel like I can breathe better without so much stuff around.

Indonesian is going ok. I was sticking to the 5 words a day until the kids got sick and then it all kind of went out of the window. Must start up that habit again. The podcasts haven’t happened but there is time for that yet. I am making a lot more effort to speak Indonesian to Made which is the main thing. Already I’ve found that sometimes I think something in Indonesian instead of English first now. A very odd feeling.

Work, yeah, blah – already discussed how well that is going with my masses of free time. Actually we had another talk about my work and I’ve kind of decided to cut back a lot on my freelancing and focus on my own work. This is rather a tough thing for me to do when we need the money so badly but I think Made is kind of right. He said “you’re stupid, why are you wasting your time working for other people when you’re clever on the computer at making websites and things for yourself”. He’s right, there are so many opportunities for making money from tourism here, as well as my websites that can make me money (not this one – I wish, ha!). I’m cutting down on web dev but doing more writing jobs because I’m enjoying that more at the moment although it doesn’t pay as well so far. I’ll reassess in another month or so and see where we are.

And as for the rest of my goals – pfffft. January has pretty much been a write-off and I’ve had neither the time or the mental energy to work on them. Lets hope things will start to look up now we’re into february and I’m past the urge to strangle my first-born several times a day.

Wow, I am sorry for that mental vomit – if you got through all this you deserve a medal! Or a coffee at least… back to our regularly scheduled programming in the next post, promise.