#funfields

Life has been getting a little too heavy lately. Things not going as smoothly as I would like. Stress is rising. Our house still not on the market. 

It became uninhabitable in December due to the removal of our toilet which, thanks to an incompetent project manager appointed by our insurance company, is still unresolved. Unbelievable.

On Monday I received a phone call from my 10-year old nephew. 

“Zia (aunty), do you want to come with us to Funfields?” - a water park an hour north of Melbourne.

My heart said yes but my head said no. 

It was a weekday. I was leaving the country in a fortnight. I had too much work and too many boxes to tick.

“I’d love to Teague but Zia... has to be a good girl”. 

His response startled me. He challenged me... to be a naughty girl.

I accepted the challenge.

Within minutes I sent my work colleagues an explanatory email before packing my laptop in amongst a towel, sunscreen, sunglasses and swimming costume. I was out of the house and bound for Funfilelds within an hour.

What followed was a day full of (...wait for it...) - Fun!

Spending time with my nephew, his 7-year old sister, her school friend and my brother was nothing short of restorative. My heart filled with joy with bellyfuls of laughter as we splashed around and played.

That night I had the best sleep in weeks (months). Long, uninterrupted, restful sleep. It was delicious.

When I got out of bed I had a renewed energy, passion and focus. As a result, I ticked off some major boxes and it reminded me of Abraham Lincoln’s ‘Sharpening The Axe’ quote. We all need to take time to sharpen our axes so that we can efficiently chop wood. 

This lead me to the childhood song “There’s a hole in my bucket”, which needed to be fixed by straw, that needed to be cut by an axe, that required sharpening by a stone, but the stone was too dry. 

I learned that instead of fetching water with a holey bucket, we can take the stone to a water park in order to sharpen the axe - then we can easily cut the straw to fix the holes in our buckets.