Us Two ....

Blogging, for me, has served its functions throughout the years.

Almost three years to be exact.
Blogging kept me entertained when I was bored, connected when I was lonely, affirmed when I was insecure and in contact when I was a long way away.
And while it's not as if I never experience those emotions now, I feel as if blogging no longer has a place in my life. And so I'm saying goodbye.
I have thought long and hard for awhile now about putting an end to my blog and I have come to the point where I need to let it go. My reasons are numerous.
For me, it started out thinking about issues of privacy. Privacy for myself, my family and the people I write about. We all know the internet is a big scary place sometimes and while I'm really not the type to be too paranoid about those sorts of things, I started thinking about how maybe I should be a little more paranoid about those things.

And then I started thinking a little more about blogging and about how it is something that often involves references to my husband, yet he is not necessarily 100% on board with the whole blogging world. I would say that's a common feeling among many husbands, or so it would seem. Brad is not the reason I am quitting blogging and I would never reduce it to that, but I feel as if I want to respect his privacy and our family by not being so public anymore about what goes on in our house. If I can respect my husband more by this one simple action, then I will.

But I would say it's my final reason that is the determinate for putting an end to my blog. Many times over in my life I have been struck with how easy it is to spend hours and hours of time on the internet. Hours and hours. And it becomes normal and it becomes obsessive. I have often found myself telling everyone about HOW VERY BUSY I am, yet I somehow find time to sit down on here.
Brad and I have experienced and become passionate about community, and loving people and showing the love of Christ in real and genuine ways through caring. And I don't want to just spout that off and say that I want to care but then not make time for people.
And so I have decided that instead of sitting on the computer for 30 minutes or an hour, I'm going to pick up the phone and give that friend a call and meet them for a coffee and see how they are doing.
Because I don't think one comment on a blog or a two lined note on a facebook wall is any decent substitute for friendship.
And I don't want to develop or enforce habits of relying on comments on my blog for affirmation in my life. Comments are great. Yes. I don't argue that point.
But, for me, I want genuine accountability and encouragement.
I believe life can go deeper than blog comments.
And I believe that, many times over, the line of what is appropriate to share and what is not appropriate to share has been crossed on my blog and others, and I don't want to fight any more with the possibility of not respecting myself by sharing something that belongs solely within the knowledge of those in whom I choose to share it.

By making this decision and even writing this post, I am not trying to make claim to some higher moral ground. I doubt if I'll ever reach that higher moral ground. I will still spend some time on the computer and even make my way around to read various blogs at times. I just don't want it to be an ingrained part of my routine. I don't want to think twice about not going on the computer in a day.
I lived one year of stress and one year of bliss and I know the difference had nothing to do with surfboards, beaches, and bikinis. It had all to do with time.
Time to sit on the couch and do nothing but lean against the shoulder of my husband.
Time to be spontaneous.
Time people spent caring for us by spending quality time with us.
Time spent off the computer and in a community of friends.
And I believe that that community doesn't only exist in some exotic country where life appears to be more simple.
I believe that community can exist when you make the effort.
And make the choices that you feel need to be made in order to make things happen.
And I feel that this is one of many choices I have to make.

This blog isn't going to disappear right away, as I have am going to go about finding a way to some how save much that has been written on here. Because like I said, blogging has been good! and I have documented much of my life on here. And I wouldn't mind saving it.
But soon, it will be gone.
So thank you.
Thank you for reading and encouraging me through this blog for a long while. I appreciate it.
I really really do.
And I will mourn the loss of not having a place to write run on sentences, use dashes and periods inappropriately and make appropriate use of sentence fragments.
I will miss being creative.
But, in the end, or even starting now, I believe it will be worth it.
I know it's worth it.



stephanie.riemer@hotmail.com

It has been a good week here in Australia, though not without its ups and downs.  Ups being sunny days, good waves, 6 seasons of ALIAS on DVD, knit toques, good sales and great friends.  Downs being good byes, decisions, course registration and broken surfboards that might happen to NOT be our own but one that someone in this family MIGHT have been riding at the time.

Stories for another day.

But Brad has been hard at work taking pictures and editing them to perfection.  I think that when we come home, we'll have one album with all the sucky pictures I took- the ones of my dirty feet, our laundry line and our tacky apartment.  The other album will be Brad's artsy surfing pictures and such, that are really just so much better to look at then the tan lines on my feet.

So here is some more pictures of what has been going on here, as we live out the final THREE days in Australia.

Three days people.

You sick of the countdown?

I am.

These are Brad's cuts from the fin of his surfboard.

Lovely.

Of course, what blog post would be complete without pictures of Bear.

The best dog ever created.

So this whole trip has basically been gearing up to the point in which we go home.  We never came to Australia with the intention of staying here forever, though many times over we have asked ourselves what it would take to make Australia our permanent home.

We're still working out the logistics of that one.

But for now, and for the past 12 months, we are counting down the days until we say goodbye.  I believe today, the count is at 16 days until we leave.  

I'm not going to say that it's completely unbelievable that we

 have to say good bye so soon, because the ending was inevitable.

We knew it was going to come to an end.

And it's a pretty amazing thing how your mind prepares yourself to leave, and the natural process of distancing one's self happens.  

And it becomes exciting to think of returning to all that you left behind and picking up where you left off- except with a somewhat altered view of how you want to live your life.

Nevertheless, it's going to be hard to physically walk out of the door and say good bye to our lives here.

SEE, I'm crying as I think about it.

Okay, let's move on from that topic.

What I WAS going to say was that in the name of leaving, we decided that we needed to go camping one last time here in Australia.

And so last weekend, a whole bunch of us went to our favourite little spot about 30 minutes south of here and had a great weekend.

It was pretty laid back.  The surf wasn't that great and so we spent our days golfing, longboarding, walking on the beach and talking.  Oh, and eating.  

Essential elements for a great weekend.

You might have noticed that the pictures that make their way onto this blog contain less of anyone else, and pretty much only Brad and I.  

And the dog.

I have to admit that as time goes on, I have decided not to include other people's lives on my blog.  NOT because I don't want to, or because I have nothing to

 say about them.

Because I do.  Because they're great.

But just because I have decided that I'm okay to put my life online, I'm not going to put theirs.

Just in case you were wondering why I talk about these friends of ours and then say nothing more about them.

They exist.  I swear.

And if you want to spend some time together in a couple of weeks, I'll show you some pictures of them- because they're so worth knowing.

But anyways, there was some cool pics that Brad caught this weekend.  As usual- Brad takes the pictures in this family.

Brad and our housemate went diving to try and get some fish for our dinner.  They didn't find any fish but they did find a shark.

A small shark, yes..but still, it's a shark.

And of course, our friend has just no problem picking it up.

Anyways, happy weekends to everyone.  That's all there is to say today.

A little while ago, it was decided that Bear needed a mat. He is supposed to be an outside dog, though following the death of Jack, we took pity on him and let him come in the back of the house.

Because you know, Bear was mourning the loss of his friend.
We could tell.

He needed our comfort.

So Bear started coming in the house a little bit more and we thought that he needed a place to sit and so maybe, just maybe, not so much dog hair would get everywhere.

And maybe, just maybe, he would not casually pull himself across the floor until you're left wondering how he came to rest his big drooling head on your lap.

So my housemate had the brilliant idea of making a Bear mat out of a bunch of old clothes that were headed for the thrift store. We set about the task of cutting old work shirts into strips, braiding them together and then sewing the whole mat in one big snail like fashion.

For the love of a dog.

We laboured on this mat. Let me tell you, WE WORKED HARD. It became a little bit of an obsession for me, perhaps because the appeal of sewing rags together just seemed so much more exciting than reading about Ancient Greece.

It was a little bit of a frustrating endeavour because as we would get excited about the progress that was made, Bear would come and lie on it and dwarf the whole thing.

Making a mat for a dog that size is a little daunting.

Anyways, we came to a point where we ran out of material and we ran out of steam. And so Bear has had a kind of a half finished mat for the last little while.

He lies on it and gets the point when we say "BEAR! Get on your mat."

But then, somedays, we find his mat mysteriously out in the yard and we wonder how it found his way out there.

And then Brad caught this video.

And we learned that maybe, just maybe, Bear isn't so keen on that mat that we so lovingly made for him.

Brad and I find this video pretty hilarious and as I sat here watching it, laughing, I got thinking about how maybe it's just us that find it funny. Maybe it's like those parents who have that kid that just sits there and blinks and it's deemed the world's greatest moment.

Maybe Bear is just our kid, that looks at us with those big soulful eyes as he rips up the mat we made.

Yet we still love him.

In fact, we love him more for it.

Maybe we just need a kid.

Or not.


attack by a Bear from Stephanie Riemer on Vimeo.

Just a few more pictures of south beach wollongong. I dropped our house mate off at his work early this morning and I found this sunrise on the way home. Not much for waves but that is what I love about the ocean.... it never fails to produce some sort of  neat-o-ness...and by now you have probably guessed that this is not the usual typing perfection of stephanie riemer but the ever-clever neat-o-ness of her loving husband.

 later dudes....   B

If you continue to scroll down this page, you're about to be inundated with a stack of surfing/beach pictures. Brad experienced the best day of surf the other day and captured bits of it on our camera. My personal philosophy lately, that I have been enforcing on Brad, is that you can't put videos in photo albums. It's often a lot easier to take a notchy little video on our digital camera other than catching the moment through a still picture. Nevertheless, videos don't do you a whole heap of good long term. So we're making more of an effort to get some pictures of our experiences here.
Brad wanted to share these pictures with his surfing buddies at home so they can vicariously experience what goes down in Brad's books as THE. MOST. AMAZING. SURF . EVER, complete with numerous barrel rides.
This blog is the most convenient place to share pictures at this point.
So now there is large amount of photos on this blog but it sums up a bit of our life. This is the beach where we walk Bear on an almost daily basis and where, when the winds are just right and the swell is nearly perfect, you can experience some perfect barreling waves.
All less than a 5 minute walk from our house.