Doula Mel: Excellence

2011 have been a tough one. Renovating my house has been a huge stressor. We are almost at the end of a long, expensive and invasive project. We were quoted 4 months from start to finish. Granted we had rainy days as well as an architect that made a few mistakes costing us both time and money but that would only add max 1 more month. 4 plus 1 equals 5 right? NOT. Try 8 months. Eight long months of having people on my property in my space every day. Noise and dust and being constantly parked in every day waiting so I could get my big car out with twenty billion reverse moves.

We are thankfully almost done. In fact yesterday should have been one of the last jobs but they screwed it up. It sucks having to put burglar bars on all our windows but we do live in SA and crime is unfortunately a daily reality. They did such a shite slap-dash job which got me thinking about work ethic and excellence. My builder although slow, is excellent and takes huge pride in his work. He is punctual and professional and expects anyone who works on our house to deliver the same service. Guess who I give the kudos to: his folks and especially his mama. Values like integrity and punctuality and being professional and excellent are taught. Loyalty, doing your best, being honest, giving good service. I want my children to be excellent at whatever they do. I don't mean like full marks excellent. I mean doing their work well. I worry that I am a little bit of a tiger mommy sometimes. My BF and sister tease me a little but I understand I am not just raising children in the now. I am raising future adults who will be parents and spouses and have careers. It is an enormous responsibility trying to manufacture a well balanced human being in our day and age. Parenting has become so deliberate and keeping the balance is difficult. My preggie diary stated just 2 aims and I guess I need to go back to those. Kind and confident. I wrote that 16 years ago and it still stands. (might I just add a few pls? Punctual, committed, loyal, grateful, polite, hard-working, aware, tolerant, healthy...)

PS, I am obviously grateful for my gorg big house and my gorg big husband who works his butt off to make it all possible but I will never ever renovate again!!