The days are just packed

I've been here a month now, and some times it feels like I just arrived and other times like I've been here forever. Today I'm at the pool--sorry, "aquatics center"--though after two laps I was so exhausted I could hardly pull myself out of the water. I may need to work on that.

Yesterday we had my girlfriend's family over to celebrate a birthday, and the day before we were in synagogue all day for Yom Kippur. (The kids were stars, entertaining themselves the entire day.) Friday evening we were also in town for kol nidre.

After the kids came home from their weekend with dad, the girls went off to "music camp" on Tuesday, and Wednesday evening we went to a "concert" put on by the kids.

In between all of this is the shopping and cooking and cleaning, plus the constant drama! One day I spent half an hour just lying on the floor, waiting for a child to calm down and pick up a piece of paper. This morning it was a half hour battle to get the kids to go to the pool, and another battle to get them out of the pool! It's fine that they don't know their own minds, I'm just unclear why they feel the need to argue about it all the time. I may need to go buy a book.

Of course what I'm *supposed* to be doing is finding a job, and I've devoted precious little time to that. I updated my CV and submitted it to one company, plus an IT guy at my synagogue.

Someone else also informed me I was applying for the wrong kind of visa entirely--rather than apply for a work permit, which just gives me the right to work here, I should be applying for a "work-to-residence" permit, which gives me the right to work and live here! (Either way, I'm beholden to my employer for two years, which is exactly the situation I was trying to avoid when I applied for the skilled work permit...)

So that's about it. The kids are still on term holiday this week, so I asked them what they wanted to do. After being told, in no uncertain terms, that they wanted to do *nothing* this week, they then came up with a list of 20 things and then started complaining they didn't have time to do all of them!!

But I'm learning to take it one day at a time, enjoying the moment and not take it too seriously. It really is exactly the right place for me at this stage of my life. Funny how life does that.