Golly it takes a long time to get things put away when you move from one country to another. I kept thinking I’d have everything whipped into shape in no time but I wasn’t thinking about how old I am nor how much crap I had to put away.

Okay, to be honest, I have a garage that’s packed from floor to ceiling with boxes and “stuff” and I have one bedroom that is full of boxes of books from our library which we don’t have in this house. It’s also got the frame for the pool table, no room for that either. It’s got the treadmill, rowing machine, stationary bicycle and exercise gym in there too.

At least I have a guest room that looks nice and is ready for someone to sleep in there. It was embarrassing because one of the bedrooms is off the foyer and until this week didn’t have doors. It had the bed and box spring, two leather chairs, 2 42″ plasma tvs in boxes, all the bed linens, blankets, bedspreads, pillows, etc and other stuff that had to find a new home.

We’ve found the nicest lady to come in to help me clean and get things better organized and that’s made my life livable. It’s amazing but I thought I could work 12 hours a day AND still make this place a home.

Now.. for the “I’ve been stupid” note of the month. I was making no-knead bread the other day. If you haven’t tried it, you’ve gotta. All you do is stir the ingredients and sit it in a bowl overnight, flop it on a floured board the next morning and fold the edges over and then bake it in a really hot cast iron pot. I’ve made this bread heaps of times and it’s fantastic cut into small pieces and dipped in a good olive oil and dukkah. On Saturday I had the pot in the oven at 450F and I took it out to plop the bread in and the pot holder had a wet spot and I started to get burnt (it IS 450F afterall) so I did what anyone would do.. I dropped one half of the pot. –on to the ceramic cook top. Glass slivers and cracks everywhere.

So, now I have to go to the appliance store and pick up the new cooktop that I ordered the other day. We’ll need a qualified electrician to hook it up so he’s showing up tomorrow. Fingers crossed that it fits in the granite cutout. I measured it twice so hopefully I’m okay. I don’t want to be cutting granite.

It seems like it’s been raining for years.  When it stops will I recognize the sun?  I’m not sure.

Winter is here, it gets dark before 6pm and it rains and rains and rains.  When I walk across the grass it squooshes and makes a sound as my foot presses down into it.  I was doing well getting out and walking with my little friend Charlie the wonderdog but I’m not game enough to walk in the rain in the winter.

1. it’s wet
2. it’s cold
3. it’s gloomy
4. I can’t seem to move away from the wood heater

What do you do to get motivated when it’s so dreary all you want to do is take a nap?  I haven’t succumbed to the nap desire because I have too much work to do but given the right conditions, I could pile up in my bed with a book or turn on the TV without blinking an eye.

I read that many people are deficient in vitamin D and around here it must be rampant!  There is a reason New Zealand is called the land of the long white cloud.

Now you know why we’re looking in southern Queensland for a house.  Sidewalks (footpaths), stores, beach, boats – and best of all… sun.  They don’t call it the Sunshine Coast for nothing.

See what I mean?

See?  Gray…  gloomy… dreary…

We arrived in Australia at 9am and were stuck in Sydney for 8 hours before our next flight to Albury. What does anyone do when they’re stuck in a city for 8 hours? We went to a movie of course! We got back to the airport in plenty of time for the short flight to Albury and then to our house in Wodonga.

This is the first time my husband has been to the house in over 2 years. We had fun reminiscing about the good old days. Once our friends knew we were back we “just had” to stop by for a drink (and always a snack). How does anyone stay on their eating plan at a time like this??

My lapband keeps me from eating like a pig because I just can’t hold as much as I could before but it does nothing for poor food choices. I’m going out tonight with 3 couples that we’ve been friends with for a long time. I say right now that I’m going to be really good but in the back of my mind that little voice is saying, “when will you see them again? Enjoy!!” Hopefully I can listen to the smart voice.

Going through everything we’ve accumulated over the past 13 years is a chore. Thankfully we’re not true packrats so it shouldn’t take much time at all. This is a photo of my kitchen. I’m imagining how it will be when it’s all empty. What was I thinking when I built a kitchen this big and why did I buy so much crap to put in it?

Only a few more days.

Wish me luck!

We’ve been living in New Zealand for a couple of years and all that time our house in Australia has been on the market.  The financial stress of paying the mortgage and paying a full time caretaker has really been tough for me.

Well, we have a contract for sale on the house.  We should know in a few days if their financing has been approved and then we just have to wait for the settlement.  I can’t tell you how much pressure this takes off both of us.  This is a photo of our house and it sits on 5 acres overlooking the city.

The house is beautiful and we built it together. At 7,000 sq. ft. it’s really too big for the two of us now that we’re getting older.  I want to travel.  I want to spend more time with my kids in the states.

So now we have to think about where we’d like to live.  Because we work on the net we can live anywhere where there’s a fast internet connection.  I’m really looking forward to exploring all our options.  I’m also thinking about building an eco friendly home.

I feel like going outside and yelling, “YAY!!!”

After my stepson’s graduation we took my husband’s parents to Scotland to visit cousins who live there while we headed to Aberdeen to visit friends of ours.  The following day we picked them up and flew to London.  We were eagerly anticipating seeing the show War Horse that had received heaps of accolades in the press both in London and back in Australia.

My father-in-law was paying for the four of us plus his grandson, his grandson’s girlfriend and my husband’s ex-wife who was there for graduation and to help my stepson organize getting all his crap back to Australia after 5 years at university.  I wasn’t too sure about the show choice.  I would have preferred a musical but the ex and my stepson were really keen to see this War Horse play.

The show is about a horse (obviously) as a young foal and all that happens to him as he makes his way towards becoming a war horse in the first world war.   Joey is an imposing puppet (full size freakin horse puppet) made of bamboo, nylon, bicycle chain and leather, and its three human operators are clearly visible, but not long into the show the horse ceases to be a puppet and is perceived by everyone in the autidence to be a living, breathing force onstage.

Well, the only thing fantastic about the play to me were the puppets.  Horses and a funny goose caught my eye.  The actual play I thought was pretty ordinary.  So here I am sitting with all the family thinking, “it will be awful if I’m the only one to think this is less than stellar writing.”

The play ended and my father-in-law (remember he’s 90 and he’s paid a fortune for the 7 tickets) comes out of the theatre and everyone is raving about how fantastic the puppets were and Rob says, “the puppets were ok but the whole thing was pretty ordinary if you ask me.”

Turns out, it was the only thing on the whole trip that we really didn’t enjoy.  Watch for the post on taking him to the Moulin Rouge!

The trip to Europe with “the olds” as we lovingly call John’s parents was a spectacular success, with only a few small hiccups.  The first day, just getting to Australia to pick them up, John lost all the train tickets.  Train tickets are like cash, you lose, you really lose.  So $4000 later and a dash to meet someone from the ticketing agency at the airport in Melbourne, we had new tickets.  Only $4000 dear, it’s only money, we can claim it on insurance if we lost them or they were stolen.  (Notice how I said we when we both know HE had the tickets, but then he was stressing and worrying big time.)

Off we went to England.  The main focus on the trip was to attend my stepson’s graduation at Reading University in England.  It all went off perfectly and everyone was happy.  It had been 9 months since John had seen his son so he couldn’t wait to catch up at dinner that night.  Now John’s dad is 90 and he’d been flying from Australia to England and he was exhausted.  Sure we had flat seats to lie down on but he’s still pretty old.  He insisted on going to dinner anyway but halfway through he started feeling very uncomfortable due to arthritis.

We drove back to our hotel and I took the olds up to their room while John went around the block and through the village to get to the back of the hotel to the parking garage.  When he got in I asked him to ring his parents and check to make sure his dad was ok.

“Not until I have had my shower!” he said.  He did ring their room and there was no answer so I started getting concerned.  Why didn’t I go? Ummm..  I’d collapsed on the bed and well, they are HIS parents after all.

When he came out  of the shower I asked him to check again and still no answer in their room.

“Put your pants on and go check on them or we’ll never be able to rest tonight,” I begged.

Off he went and he was gone about 20 minutes.  I figured he was having a chat with them and he’d be back and I was so tired that frankly it didn’t matter.  He was dealing with them and I could relax.

20 minutes later he comes in the room and he’s laughing.

“I rounded the corner and there there both were wandering the hallway in their jammies.”

“Why?”

“When I rang the phone, dad was in the loo and he knew that mum couldn’t hear the phone so he hurried out to answer it.  He came out the door and turned left and opened the door to the room instead of turning right and going around to where the bed and the phone was.  He knocked on the door but mum couldn’t hear him, so he started looking for our room but he couldn’t remember the number so he was wandering around hoping one room would look familiar.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“When mum realized that he wasn’t in the room she thought he was having a senile moment and had taken off so she ran out of the room and then heard ‘click’ when the door closed.  She decided to worry about that later and find him first.  She went up and down all 4 halls and finally found him and when I got there, she was scolding him merrily and it was all his fault that they were outside in their jammies.”

“So what did you do???” I asked again.

“Oh, I went downstairs and asked for a key to their room and the guy asked me if I had any ID and I said no and he said he couldn’t help me without ID for that room.  So I told him my parents, dad is 90 and mum is 84, were wandering the halls in their pajamas and could he send someone up to let them in their room.  They didn’t have ID either.  So he gave me the key and I let them in and settled them down and they’re fine.”

That was day one.  It was a great trip, although taking really old people on a European holiday is like taking little kids. You can’t yell at them and you can’t hit them.

No, not my accident.  We had guests visiting from Auckland this weekend and they brought along their 16 year old daughter.  On Sunday morning she asked if she could take the car for a drive just to have something to do.  Her mother wanted to say no but feared an argument that would embarrass her so she said yes.  All the warnings were given – don’t drive too fast, be careful, don’t be gone long.  All the things that anyone would say to a kid going for a drive in unfamiliar territory.

About 45 minutes later, in she comes, sobbing and wailing with a woman who’d been kind enough to pick her up after she went around a corner twice as fast as the printed speed limit.  She hit soft gravel and spun around a few times and smashed her car into a dirt bank.  The car was a total wreck and had to be towed to our house where it remains.  Family had to drive up from Auckland to pick them up and take them back home.  Their entire family was concerned about the accident and what the loss of the car would mean to their daughter / granddaughter.

Initially my husband was not popular when he said it was the best accident she could have.

“Any accident that a 16 year old can walk away from is a good lesson to learn,” he said.

I have to agree with him.  Once she was a bit calmer and we’d driven over an hour to the hospital (we’re pretty remote here) to ensure that she wasn’t hurt, she accepted that she drove too fast and while devastated that she no longer had a car of her own, it was a lesson she’d never forget.

After they’d left and I’d cleaned up from the dinner I’d prepared for everyone I thought about what lessons I’d learned for myself in all of that.  For me it was a reminder that you never know when your time is up.  It could be 50 years from now or you could get hit by a bus tomorrow or there could be an earthquake or well, anything at all really.

Life is all about today.  Yesterday is history and you can’t relive or rewrite it and tomorrow might come, might not, so why worry about it?  I need to live more in the now and stop thinking about what life’s going to be like when I’m not fat any more or when I have more money or when I can finally have a vacation or when the house is clean – you get my point.  I find myself looking forward all the time rather than enjoying my here and now.  I’m going to do better.

I was offline for the entire weekend through Monday because the data center where my server is hosted blew up.  Yeah, blew up. Explosion, fire – knocked out 9000 servers and my server was in the hardest hit area so came online last.  Sorry for anyone who planned to have Entrecard advertising, but as it turns out, Entrecard.com’s server farm was in the same building with me.  They were offline just a wee bit less than I was so I didn’t have to feel guilty at all.

We got a new kitten today and we can’t come up with a good name. We’re really bad at naming animals. She’s a beautiful minky colored tonkinese cat with beautiful blue eyes. She’s spending her first night away from mom and her siblings and she’s decidedly unhappy at the moment. I’ve got scratch marks everywhere and she’d love to give me some more, “just try picking me up one more time. “  I can hear her saying that, I swear.

She’ll be fine in a few days. We’re keeping her separated from our puppy Charlie and his nose is out of joint all the way to Friday. He keeps coming to my outside office door and throwing himself at it hoping the glass will break and he’ll get that cat. He’s barely 3 months old and covered in curly fur and as cute as he can be but puppies are well.. puppies. We’ll keep the kids separated for a few more days until she gets more accustomed to her surroundings and being away from home. She’s been in an outside run so hasn’t been in the house before. She LOVES being by the heater so that’s a win.

Anyway, got any suggestions for a great kitty name for our little princess?

p.s. Yes, she was insulted at being given an old dog bed to sleep in. Her new igloo is on order.