Category Archives: ponderings

its just how it is

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Its been a really busy weekend. And a tiring week before that where I found myself falling asleep by 9pm rather than work on anything. That’s partly why I haven’t blogged for a few days. And I’ve started to feel guilty about not blogging regularly! I’ve put this added pressure on myself to blog about my day, the small (or big) things I’ve done or made. That in turn leads to pressure to actually DO or MAKE things to blog about. Its a vicious circle.

And its not like I haven’t got enough on my plate as it is.

Another reason I haven’t blogged much is that sometimes I just don’t feel like it. I mean, I generally love talking about myself, my life and the stuff I do. Its just that sometimes I’m tired or not in a good mood, and what I write isn’t interesting or amusing, just flat and boring. So I apologize for the boring blogs I’ve written when I’ve forced myself to write out of a feeling of obligation to ‘blog’.

Blog: a versatile word for the 21st century. It can be a verb (I blog, do you blog?) or a noun (I read his blog.)

See, I’ve been reading lots of blogs over the last few months and I let myself become infected with the ‘grow your blog’ bug. There are some incredibly talented women out there doing amazing stuff with furniture, paint and all kinds of things and blogging about it. They have busy blogs with lots of followers and host link parties and, and, and…

I started to think “hey, I could be like that.” After all, I make stuff and play with furniture and paint. I’ve rennovated. Am constantly rennovating as a matter of fact.

So I started to push myself to do more, blog more, share more of my adventures. With everything else I do in my day to day life, another load of  ‘gotta do’ wasn’t putting me in my happy place. I realised that I blog cause I like to talk about myself and my life in a fun, upbeat way. Plus I like to show off, an added bonus.

Make blogging into a job though, and the fun’s gone. I’ve never been good at doing things over and over again and maintaining enthusiasm for them. Which is why I make one or two of anything and move on.

It was the same with everything I’ve done in my life. I learned to ride, got good. Moved on. I learned to dance, got good, won some competitions, moved on. I learned to roller blade, conquered that, moved on.  I never quit, I get good, then I go onto other things.

Get the picture? I’ll do anything that interests me. I’ll learn and work on it till I do it well, then I’ll find something else to work on. Maybe its why I can’t seem to make mega bucks selling a product. At least with paintings, even if I’m doing 5 poodles or 6 dobermans in a row, each painting is new and different. Each painting is an original.

I guess that’s why I’ve been planning to open an esty shop for my recycled/re-used items. Every time I make something it will be different cause I work with things I find.

I sure can ramble can’t I? I think my point is that I’m not going to worry about growing my blog and keeping up with the blog superstars. I’ll blog when I want, about what I want (and I don’t care if that’s not grammatically correct!) and I won’t worry about how many people read it.

Anyway, this last week I had a moment where I could not help myself. I’ve been thinking about how I could use an old metal object I found in a tip shop a while ago. I think its from old fashioned weight scales but I’m not sure. Whatever it is was originally, I thought it would work as a kitchen tool hanging rack.

I’d been thinking of moving the spice cabinet and putting the hanging rack near the stove, but I hadn’t had time to do it over last weekend. I thought I’d do it this weekend but during the week I was overcome by that feeling where I just have to do it now.

Do you ever get that feeling? Where you look at something and sensible you says “do it on the weekend” but the impulsive you starts pushing couches around the living room at 10pm at night?

Maybe its only me…


I fixed the rack thingy to the bottom of the top cabinets and used wire hooks Wayne had made to hang a few older utensils. It looked quite nice.

Yep. It looked nice. But this is my kitchen and I need to cook in it. I don’t have enough space to just hang items on display. So, although it looked nice with all the old green and metal utensils, this is what it really looks like.

I hung the oven mitts back where they usually live, on the hook beside the stove. I moved the slice of timber chopping block I made under the hanging rack. I put all our wooden spoons in an old dripping pot I found at a 2nd hand store a few weeks ago. And I hung our plastic utensils from the rack.

We have too many utensils. I think I need to go through my cupboards and drawers and get rid of things we no longer want or never use. We have too much STUFF.

So, there’s another spot in the kitchen that’s had a ‘Zefi’ touch. I need to rip the whole kitchen out and redo it.

z

my home doesn’t look like that

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I see the most beautiful houses on the blogs I follow. I pin images of rooms I admire and wish I could recreate in our home. The ideal kitchen, the perfect bedroom, the gorgeous living room, the pretty and fun bathroom…
But that’s not what my house looks like.
Yeah, I have quite a few pretty items in my home. Lots of things which are special to me cause they are items I’ve found in unlikely places, items I’ve saved, restored or made myself. Like the tins holding my brushes and pencils. Or the old tea crate holding my paints and the old nail crates holding my canvases which I found at a farm auction.
What I don’t have is a perfect home. My house is a mish mash of things which I like, things I had already, things I’ve been given or inherited, that don’t match. 
I have spots of “pretty” and corners of “attractive”, but no cohesiveness, no overall theme or feel to my home. Even the nice spots aren’t perfect to photograph cause “yucky” isn’t far away: the salmon carpet or peach blinds or blue benchtops or something is always in the way.
I think I was getting there in my home in Fentonbury, finally getting the place to tie in together and flow from one room to another, but it took years to get it to that stage where things just fit together. The house on the farm remains a mess. The salmon carpet is a thorn in my side. And we have too much furniture which doesn’t really fit or suit in the rest of the house.
I’d like a bedroom with open space and simple lines. I’d like a walk in wardrobe in the tiny room next door to the bedroom. I’d like a pretty guest room with simple yet elegant items. I’d like a bathroom I didn’t cringe about when showing people the house. I’d like a kitchen with character.
I admire photos like this bedroom for its simplicity, or this living room for its low key elegance… but there is no way I can have a house of white on white as much as I would love it. No french provincial for me. I live with 4 dogs (and Wayne) on a farm with lots of mud.
I put black and white tile vinyl in the mudroom and I’m already sorry. 
And that’s not even talking about the kitchen. I would love a big country kitchen like this, but there’s not enough room for an island bench, let alone an island and a table. So I’ll have to make do with what I have and hopefully achieve something more like this or this. One day. When I have the time and money…
Till then, my kitchen is a mess. Blue laminex benchtop. White laminate cupboards. A laminate tile backsplash. Boring. No character. Bordering on ugly. A single sink. No dishwasher. Tons of cupboard space but not much area to display things I like…
I’m itching to change things around. To do up the kitchen, to make my walk-in-wardrobe, to redo the guest room… to repaint the entire living room a pale grey or creamy white… The living room was meant to be pale grey but when the paint went on the walls it looked light blue. 
One day. I pray for patience, and I want it now.

We had the horse’s hooves done today. Wally was a total pain to do. He’s still playing up really badly with one of his back legs. We had the chiropractor fix him but he’s still horrible about it. It got done in the end but I think Simon (the farrier) and Wayne had a few years knocked off their time on earth.

Dancer was great – she was extremely hard to catch due to her shyness over her head, but a few carrots and she was soon almost back to normal. Thank goodness.

Ben was a sweetie as always, till he nipped Kellie in the tit.

He thought it was a nice soft spot to nibble. Hm…

We also have a visitor here tonight. When Kellie and I went into the New Norfolk to buy something for desert we saw a gorgeous black and white english staffie, an intact male with a collar on, walking on the bridge with a group of motley teenagers. He crossed the road and almost got hit by two cars and the kids didn’t seem to care.

When I stopped the car and abused them for having their dog offlead, they said he just followed them and he wasn’t theirs. I said they should take him back where they found him and they said ‘We ain’t walking back up there’. I was so angry. Kellie and I got him in the car and after shopping we got in touch with the council animal control officer. He’ll be over to pick him up in the morning and hopefully find his owners.

He’s the sweetest thing. He’s bedded down in the grooming room for the night, food and water and he’s just gone to sleep.

I swear. No way could I leave him wandering the street with these idiotic kids. And being an intact male I didn’t want him to end up in the wrong hands.

The council really should put me on their payroll.

z

work is giving me a headache

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Work will be the death of me
Its been a quiet weekend at Lake Wobegon Wind Dancer Farm. We just haven’t had the energy or the time to get up to much. Sometimes just day to day living takes all you have to give.
I’ve dedicated quite a bit of my time this last week to thinking about things… adding to my to do list and not so much crossing things off but re-arranging them! You know, the way council workers do to potholes. Just when you think you’ve memorized them they go moving them on you.
Well, such is my To Do List. Every so often I go through it and re-organise the categories. In fact, I do that with my Pinterest boards also. Keeps me on my toes.

Last weekend when Wayne’s friend Chris was visiting my To Do list was the subject of much amusement. I’d forgotten to hide it (like a secret diary). I use the coffee table in the living room as a crafting table where I work while I watch TV and had it sitting there… in the open… at the mercy of any and all prying eyes.

Oh the embrassament. 304 things to do ‘today’.

Sigh.

Having to work is just ruining my life. If I didn’t have to work 4 days a week at a job, then groom dogs on my ‘days off’ I could dedicate more time to my art, my design jobs and my hobby projects. Wouldn’t that be the life?

Note to self: buy a lottery ticket.
z

road rage and roadkill

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Did I mention that we’ve had a few fatalities lately?
Life on a farm is bound to bring you closer to the facts of life – birth and death for instance. But death is never something pleasant when you walk up on it.
We got home from shopping in town a couple of weeks ago, with a visitor in tow, only to find a horrible sight. Romeo was carrying something in his mouth.
A duck head.
I soon saw the decapitated body of a duck, one of our young drakes, in the middle of the driveway.
Wonderful.
Montana was so proud. She pointed at it with a look which clearly said ‘Look Mom! Look what we did!’
Sometimes having a man around comes in really handy. Burying small corpses for instance.
Then, not long after that on the same weekend, we walked across one of the paddocks to check the ford and stream and I found six dead wallablies. Not one or two, but SIX. Spread through the two side paddocks.
Wayne had called me over to show me a wallaby hiding in a pile of rubbish to be burned earlier that morning and told me Barney had had it down by the neck before he knew what was happening and called him off.
That’s it, I said, Barney is no longer allowed out into the paddocks in the early morning or late afternoon when its dark when we go out to feed the horses. I figured he’d been cutting a wide swathe through the wallaby population during his explorations of the paddocks.
I was not impressed.
Neither was Wayne when I made him collect all the little corpses and pile them up for burial.
Thing is… there was a wallaby we’d seen in the tiny paddock out the front of the casita during that week. (We really need to name our paddocks, I think.)
This little fellow seemed not to be too afraid, he moved off only when you got too close. I wondered about him but wasn’t concerned. I just made sure Barney didn’t get into the paddock.
One day about a week later I went out to feed the horses at dusk and didn’t see the wallaby. So I went looking. He was curled up in a little nest of grass in the far corner. He was just lying here. He made no attempt to get away, just hissed at me.
I could see skin and bones clearly from where I stood. I touched him. He was wasting away. I picked him up and went over to Wayne. When I put the poor little thing down it stood, wobbled and fell over and just lay there, hissing.
It was heartbreaking. I swear, if I’d had a gun I would have shot it myself. I couldn’t bare to think of it lying in the cold that night, dying slowly.
Again, being a man sucks. Wayne had to do the job.
Times like this I’m glad I can hide behind being a ‘girl’. At risk of setting the entire women’s lib movement back 60 years, I’m glad to be a helpless female at times like this.
I had to rethink Barney’s guilt. Maybe the wallabies are dying of something other than dog jaws around the throat. Sure, Barney may have helped some of them to the green pastures in the sky, but I think they were dying of something else already…

Could someone be poisoning wallabies?

When I arrived in Fentonbury, I found another dead wallaby. This one did not die of any disease. It had been hit by a car. I have no idea how it managed to make its way so far up the driveway to the garage, but it had… despite the fact that one of its back legs was broken in half, bone sticking out, paw curled up and facing the wrong way… That poor thing tried so hard to live.

I just hate it when things die.
I know its a fact of life. I just hate seeing so much dead wildlife everywhere. Tasmanian roads are full of it. I suppose every country area is like that. We have countless roadkill on our own road – wallabies mostly, native hens, even a quoll this week.
Unfortunately, I’ve been responsible for a few dead animals on the roads over the years. I hate it, and I drive so slowly at night  I’m afraid that one day I may end up roadkill myself due to some road rage incident. Or cause I braked to avoid hitting something and ended up on my roof in a ditch.

My mantra when I drive at night now is ‘drive slowly and don’t slam the brakes’. I’ve had a few close calls.

But its like my car attracts animals. Before moving to Tasmania I’d run over a possum in Melbourne. It just ran onto the road and under my car before I could react. It ran right under my tyre.

Since moving to Tasmania I can take the blame for 1 possum, 1 rooster and 2 rabbits. I’m also responsible for 1 wallaby with a (hopefully just) sore tail, 1 with a sore butt and a quoll with a bad headache. These 3 actually kept going so I hope they made it.

I drive slowly and I brake for animals. I think you can get stickers that say that. Might keep the rednecks off my tail as I crawl along in the dark. I’m considerate, though, I pull over and let them pass when I can.


Tasmania really is the roadkill state. On the other hand, I guess we’re lucky. Not like in the USA where deer, moose and bears might be found crossing roads at night. Hit those and you’re bound to be as dead as they are. Or your car will be. So people might have a bit more care and respect for them. Here, except for wombats which can launch a semi-trailer into the air on impact, most of our animals are small and don’t damage cars or kill you unless you swerve to miss them… something not many people seem to do.

Anyway, here are a couple of gorgeous wire flowers Wayne made me as he sits, bored, resting. Cute aren’t they?

z

its a pain in the wrist!

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Fox Photos, Getty Images

It’s been hell week around here.

It all started last weekend with a sore wrist.

If you want to get technical, the sore wrist started over 20 years ago, but let’s not get too carried away.

Week before I lifted a client’s bag at work and something went PING in my wrist. I swear, the bag is heavier than the client. From now on, for OH&S reasons, I’ll use the van hoist to lift the bag into the van.

But I digress… I was simply trying to set the scene. The wrist was already feeling a bit more fragile than normal, which is fragile enough.

Then I decided to groom the poodles. Ordinarily, not a big job. But on top of other things I’d had to do on the weekend and the long overdue-ness of the grooming, it really took it out of me.

Looking back now with what the Doc said, I can understand where a lot of my wrist issues come from. Yes, I gave in and went to the doctor. Again. Last time I simply got “It could be carpal tunnel, but we can’t be sure. Just rest it.”

However, the pain used to last a night then go away. Lately the time lag between being sore and feeling better seems to stretch out to days or weeks. It really gets me down. Not only am I sore but I have to put off things I need/want/am itching to do.

So off to the doctor I trekked. This time, not my regular doctor, agreed we test for rheumatoid arthritis given its hereditary and I’ve had pains in my other hand as well. But he said that the wrist problem was a separate issue. He seems to think its not carpal tunnel but de quervain’s tenosynovitis – aka washer woman’s syndrome or, more exotically, gamer’s thumb.

I figure that having had RSI years ago which resulted in pain every time I over-used my right hand in any repetitive way, has somehow made that wrist weaker and more susceptible to this new and improved problem.

Whatever the cause, the only real treatment is rest.

Rest. What’s that????

I hate resting. I have too much to do. If I rest my body then my brain just goes into overdrive and I can’t sleep.

ugh.

So I’ve been rather down this week. Add to that a hellish week at work where everything that could go wrong did…. you get the picture.

Getty Images

I look forward to the weekend, though this weekend is stuffed up as it starts with a full day of training at work.

Still, there are things to look forward to. After work today Wayne and I will visit the Art from Trash exhibition in Salamanca which I’m excited about. Then on Sunday I’ll have time to work on some of my own projects.

There are so many of them and I’m really keen to get to them. Nothing too wrist/thumb intensive…

I’ll leave you with some cheerful thoughts.

See ya soon.
z

streamlining

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Its only Saturday night and the weekend already seems too short.

This morning Wayne, Merrill and I made a trip up to Fentonbury in two cars and a trailer loaded up with furniture and ‘stuff’. Tomorrow we’ll be going up again with more stuff. Its exhausting.

On the positive side, things are coming along nicely. Soon there’ll be enough stuff in the house to live there! The new/refurbished wood heater is going in this week sometime so once thats done it’ll be like home again.

Its been really fun furnishing the house with less. You know how you accumulate way more than you need and homes end up looking cluttered? Well this has been an opportunity to furnish a house and only pick and choose what I want to take up and put in the house. I’m really enjoying it.

I’ll be taking more photos to share soon as the house is looking decent. Right now there are boxes all over and unmade beds and the benchtops are full of things that need putting away. Not to mention the yard which needs a major cleaning up.

However, once the new photos are taken I’ll share them on here and update the real estate listing as well. The trees and bushes have grown immensely since I moved out over a year ago so I’d like to show what it looks like now. It was so beautiful, so peaceful, the yard so lush… I was giving in to the ol’ regrets… The ‘I wish we hadn’t bought elsewhere and stayed there’ regrets.

But what’s done is done. We love it here. And I lived in Fentonbury for 8 years – it took a long time to get it to where it is now. We’ve only been here a year. Imagine how great this place will be in 8 years!

Wayne is watching football and I’m on the computer trying to tidy things up. I have a ton of things to do but I’m tired… I’ve spent HOURS on Facebook.

You know, I never really understood the purpose of FB. Its handy, sure, and its fun to look in on friends occasionally… but I never really got it. I still can’t totally figure out how it works.

For instance, I’ve always wondered how come I never heard news on FB the way other friends seem to. I’d get calls saying ‘Did you see…?’.

No.

Yes, I’m their friend on FB, but I didn’t see.

You know why? Cause I only just realised that you can chose who’s updates you want to appear on your timeline! How was I to know this?

I’ve got about 700 FB friends and I get reams of updates from people I don’t know from a bar of soap – except they also own/love poodles or horses or a related to me. Yeah. I have a rather big extended family. I have relatives I’ve never met…

So, I’ve spent hours tidying up my FB friends and turning off ‘show on timeline’. I’m not sure if thats the solution, but fingers crossed. Problem is I accidentally click on a name when I’m trying to switch off the updates and then I have to wade though pages of friends to find where I was.

I bet that once I go through 700 friends manually I’ll find a way to do it with one click…

Anyway, somewhere in between loading stuff into the ute and writing lists, I found time this morning to stick some upholstery tacks onto the kitchen chair. It looks great. Though naturally I didn’t buy enough tacks. I got one pack and it turns out I needed 1.5 packs.

Oh well. What’s another visit to Spotlight?

I actually love visiting Spotlight. Then again, I love so many places… hardware stores, tip shops, IKEA…

I even enjoy grocery shopping. I think its all the possibilities… When I wander around a tip shop or a hardware store I can always see the possibilities in things. ‘I can do xxx with that’ or ‘I can do xxx to this’. When I wander around Spotlight its the same. And IKEA… well, I just love that place! I feel rather deprived since they didn’t open a store in Hobart as they’d promised.

Supermarkets are also about possiblities. The possibility of food to cook, recipes to try out… new ice cream flavours…

Speaking of food possibilities, this week I got this sudden urge to revisit favourite Dutch foods. I found a recipe for klets koekjes (lace cookies) and eagerly made them.

Total disaster.

Not even the dogs will eat them.

Plus I burned them…

I’m not new to disasters though. I read the sequel to Julie & Julia a few months ago and Julie Powell raved about Ukranian banosh. So I made it.

YEECH.

Maybe it wasn’t the recipe. Maybe it was me. Whatever. The chickens didn’t mind it.

I got the urge to make a mashed potato dish with sauerkraut, bacon bits and pineapple. Yeah, wierd I know, but I’d had it in Holland many years ago and remembered it fondly. That worked out alright and even Wayne (who dislikes pineapple in food) admitted it was good.

Next I’ll make hutspot. Another Dutch mashed potato dish… mmmmm.

Lately I’ve also been nostalgic for greek food – stuff my mom used to make. Comfort food.

Last weekend I made halva – a semolina pudding with honey and almonds. Yum. And tonight I made kolivozoumi – a kind of porridge made with whole wheat and topped off with nuts, cinammon, sesame seeds and sultanas. YUM.

This dish is actually somewhat of a rarity even among greeks. Mom used to make it all the time, but very few greeks actually know what it is. Back when we first moved back to Greece we had an old wood heater you could cook on. Mom would make a vat of this stuff and keep it on the side of the heater so it was always warm. We could just go help ourselves – breakfast, lunch or dinner. Mmm-mm!

When I wanted to make it I asked all over for someone who could not only give me a recipe, but tell me where I could buy the wheat and what to ask for. I ended up finding a page on FB all about greek food. They didn’t have the recipe but were kind enough to find it for me.

I’m thinking I might try to cook something different once a week from now on. Not necessarily new (though that would be nice) but different – something I haven’t cooked for years maybe.

See how that goes, but if you want any recipes, just let me know and I’ll share them in a blog.

z

if there’s no rest for the wicked, what does that make me?

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Even when I’m supposed to be taking it easy, I’m doing something. I just can’t stop. I’ll stop for a cup of coffee but I’ll read a book or check mail while I do it. I watch TV but half the time I also work on a craft project, brush or caress a poodle. Before I got a PVR I used to read a book during the ads.

Point in case, the vase above. This used to be an empty coffee can. I collected some old gum tree bark and used the hot glue gun (I love my hot glue gun) to glue the curls of bark to the tin. They look amazing…. just like cinnamon sticks. This is only a preview. I have plans for this vase… stay tuned.

Another thing I worked on while watching TV over the last week was a birdhouse. We now have two birdhouses hanging off the trellis in the yard. I promise I’ll take better photos one of these days but I was so eager to hang it up and see what it looked like in its ‘natural environment’.

This too was made from an old coffee can. Wayne helped by cutting out the door for me and making a roof out of some old rusty tin. Great isn’t it? I love the little twisted wire ‘hooks’ he made to hold the roof on.

All I did to improve this birdhouse was to glue sticks to it to cover the tin. I’ve temporarily hung it off an old horse bit we have on the trellis. Kinda cool.

So, besides all that, now that the kitchen table is done, what have I been doing? Well. On Monday I found out that the tenants had vacated my house in Fentonbury. I had given them notice as I discovered that its very stressful and not at all easy to sell a house while its rented out. The only thing to do was to take the house back and move myself back in so I can have the house looking the way I like to have it: neat, tidy, clean, maintained… and gorgeous.

Not that the tenants were bad… they were fine to start with and to be honest I never had an problems with them till I decided to sell the house. From the minute I notified them of my intent to sell they became the tentants from hell. I wont go into details, all I can say is that it could have been way worse. I’ve seen the horror stories. We lost a sale because of them, but the house is ok… Nothing some cleaning and TLC can’t fix.

I’m so glad to have my house back. Its been a really hard thing for me to let go of this house. I think its because I didn’t sell it but decided to rent it. I confess I’m a control freak… I like things done my way. And seeing my house not being maintained the way I would myself… well… it was hard to deal with. If I’d sold it it would have been someone else’s house, no longer mine to worry about.

When I sold my house in Melbourne I moved away so I didn’t see what the new owners did or didn’t do. When I did visit Melbourne and drove by one day a couple of years later I was disappointed that the new owners didn’t seem as house proud as I was… but it was no longer my house, so it wasn’t my problem.

My advice is this (and I really wish I’d given myself this advice a year ago): don’t rent your house. Not if you’re attached to it… if you want to move on, sell it. Being a landlord sucks.

But enough of that. I had been talking about my week. It started with learning the house was vacant on Monday, then having to take a day off on Tuesday to go and inspect it with the agent to be sure all was ok. From there things just got busier and busier. Tomorrow is Good Friday, so with having Monday and Tuesday off its been a short week for me… short but not quiet! My week included finding the vinyl I want in the mud room, taking chainsaws in for a service, grooming 2 new dogs, working, picking Merrill up from the airport, visiting the tax man, shopping and taking Montana to the vet to be spayed.

Yes… My baby girlie is in the living room right now, sore and miserable. She won’t eat even though I chopped up some leftover sausages and a chicken schnitzel and tried hand feeding her. That’s ok. She’ll eat it in the morning I’m sure.

Thing is… I knew I didn’t want to breed Montana again. She only had the one litter but she had bad diarhea for weeks afterwards so I didn’t want to risk her health by having another litter. Plus, if I did  have another litter I’d have to keep a puppy and then I’d have to show it… and who has the time? and who has the money? Breeding Montana would mean airfares to the mainland for both of us, stud fees, and the cost of raising a litter. I sure don’t have money to spare right now.

So, even though I knew I wasn’t going to breed her again, I couldn’t bring myself to put a full stop on that part of my life. You know… just knowing that I could breed another litter if I wanted to, that my own line didn’t end there, well… it was reassuring.

But I finally decided it was time. Montana is 7.5 yrs old. I wouldn’t breed her again even if I wanted to at this age. So this morning I dropped her off and asked that the vet who spayed her also look at a small hard lump on her tummy near her last teats.

$565 later (yeah, you heard me!) Montana is spayed, all went well and the lump was removed and is being sent to be biopsied.

I was fully expecting the vet to tell me it was nothing. But here I am now… not even wanting to think anything other than positive stuff.

He said its a mammary tumour – of those 50% are benign and 50% not. Of the not, 50% are the type that spread, 50% aren’t. So, there’s a 75% chance this is nothing at all to worry about.

Fingers crossed. I try not to think that Pagan (her mother) died at age 9 of cancer. She was fine till one day she had diarhea and didn’t eat, the second day when things didn’t pick up they took her to the vet and the ultrasound showed she was full of growths in her abdomen. There’d been no indication.

Hopefully this is nothing at all. I couldn’t bare her being sick. I adore my baby girl. She is the most beautiful dog in the world.

Ok. Enough of that. It will all be fine. I’m going to go cuddle her for a while.

So, tomorrow I had planned to go up to Fentonbury to start the clean up of my house and yard. But I wont be… Wayne suggested that a day off wouldn’t kill me. Little does he know huh? I’ll stay here and look after my girlie, clean my car, do some work on my dining chairs, sort out stuff to take to Fentonbury, catch up on emails and computer work… that’s taking it easy!

I’ll leave you with some tip shop bottles I gave a ‘sea glass’ effect to using PVA glue and food colour (yep, you go it! another Pinterest idea). These will be going to the bathroom in Fentonbury as decor.

z

I blame my brother

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A long long time ago, I shared a bedroom with my younger brother Peter. Obviously, like most young siblings, there came a time when my younger brother became my worst enemy instead of my closest friend. At that time, sharing a bedroom with a BOY, much less a younger brother, was something I definitely did NOT enjoy.

During that time my brother also learned how to do things to annoy me.

For one thing he loved raw onions. I hated them. (Still do in fact, probably due to childhood trauma). He used raw onions to his advantage as much as he could, eating them then breathing in my general direction. Yeech.

He also learned to burp. Loud. And long. He could burp the alphabet and say ‘Hello, how are you?’ in a burp.

Charming huh?

He’d burp at the table after mom and dad left us to clean up, resulting in me calling him ‘sewer breath’ among other affectionate nicknames.

Unfortunately, he also learned to combine his two hobbies: eating raw onion and burping, thus making my life totally miserable.

He’d eat a plateful of raw onion with dinner, then he’d go into the bedroom before bedtime and burp over my bed, leaving a lingering aroma of onion burp to settle over my bed.

I was not pleased.

See… Peter, like most men, can burp on cue. I never learned how to do that. I’d drink a coke, swallow air for all I was worth, only to bring it back up in a pitiful little ‘bfp’ instead of his roaring ‘BURRRRRRRRRRRP’.

Then, one day, I have no idea how it happened, but we were sitting there at the table when suddenly I felt an erruption coming. I let it gather momentum, growing like a snowball as it rose from my very depths…and let it fly.

My brother almost fell off his chair. His eyes about popped out of their sockets. Not only was it big and loud with admirable reverb, but it came out of his prissy sister!

Over the next few weeks, and years really, I’ve had the fortune to overhear my brother in conversations with friends – you know, the boys will be at a party or in a pub and one of them will burp and the others will make admiring comments… then Peter will inevitably say ‘Man, that was nothing! You should hear my sister burp! She can rattle the plates in the cabinets!’

I’m so proud.

I’d finally earned my brother’s admiration.

However… I do blame my brother. Cause since then, burping became a kind of secret pleasure of mine. In company I’ve always held back, playing at being ladylike. But in private I’m sure I’ve managed to break a few records. Only my dogs had been witness to my growing talent in that area till recently. They generally take it in their stride, but sometimes “The Burp” will cause one of them to start and fall off a chair.

I’ve always felt I could share who I truly am with Wayne. He, being a man, has never been shy about burping in my presence and admiring the decibels he can achieve. I felt that I had finally found someone who, loving me as I am, would appreciate my full range of talents, so…

I came out of the closet!

I no longer hide my satisfaction of a well formed burp. I share it with Wayne who I can rely on to appreciate it fully.

“Well brought up. Pity you weren’t.”

I’m proud to say that in a contest of who can burp loudest or longest, I’m the hands down winner. However, I still can’t not burp on cue, so I lose points there.

Sometimes I think Wayne wishes I had kept some mystery about me, particularly about that part of me. The other day when I burped in the car he clutched his ear screaming “You busted my eardrum! I’m deaf!”

He wishes.

Still. I blame my brother. He’s the one who planted the seed that burping can be a pleasurable hobby. And pushing it underground for so long only allowed it to gain strength and momentum.

Peter, you’d be proud. (And slightly ashamed).

z

a little bit of washing

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Its been a very productive weekend. Although I didn’t manage to cross much off my ever growing To Do list, I feel like I actually accomplished a lot of things.

We started off today with breakfast on the deck – the weather was perfect today. Warm and sunny but not hot or muggy. A bit of a breeze, but not windy. Gorgeous. I made french toast with bacon, banana and maple syrup. Yum.

Its funny, but years ago I was reading a book by Michael Connelly where the main character, a detective named Harry Bosch, went into a truck stop for breakfast and ordered a short stack with bacon and maple syrup.

I’d never had bacon and maple syrup together before. I’d never had bacon with pancakes before for that matter. I thought ‘OMG! Bacon and maple syrup, together! What a wonderful idea!’

I couldn’t wait to try it. A couple of years ago I went to a cafe for breakfast (something I lurve doing but rarely get to do) and guess what they had on the menu? French toast with banana, bacon and maple syrup!

I became addicted. For a while I made it every weekend. In fact I made it so often I got sick of it. Today was the first time in months I’d made it and it was like meeting an old friend.

With such a great start to the day, its not surprising things went well. I put on some washing, removed the glass from the new old front door. Hung out the washing. Put on more washing. Cleaned up the broken glass. Knocked the top off the old table I’m doing up for the kitchen. Hung up washing. Put on more washing. Cleaned up broken bits of plywood. Pulled apart the table frame from the top frame. Hung out more washing. Put on more washing. Sanded the table legs. Straightened the crooked table leg. Glued and nailed the table frame back on. Hung out the washing. Put on another load of washing. Went to the supermarket to buy ingredients for borscht, picked up chaff for the horses. Brought in all the washing and tossed it onto an armchair in the living room. Chopped up the vegies and put them on to boil for the borscht.

You get the picture.

I had a productive day. Among all the washing I managed to make chocolate muffins and borscht (which I’d never made before and only tasted once before in my life) out of the excess beetroots we had.

I would have vacuumed the living room and tidied it up as I did the kitchen and office, but I couldn’t open it to change bags. Its a sign. No more cleaning for today!

I think I deserve a break. An ice cream and some TV is in order.

However, before I go I’ll share these photos of a couple of my old drawings. I found these while looking for something else yesterday.

z

dances with spiders

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Its been a long hard week. There were all kinds of exciting things happening at home:

We got our new gutters. With a bonus new leak over the front door, inside the mudroom-to-be. Now it seems we can pee without getting our feet wet, but we still need an umbrella to get to the toilet.

Hopefully that will be fixed on Tuesday when the roofing men come to finish the flashing.*

We have new ‘austerity measures’ at home now due the tenants moving out of my house in Fentonbury next month. With them gone we will be broke paying off two mortgages, but I can clean up the place and actually be able to present it to potential buyers as a home I’m proud of. I believe the tenants were a major reason we lost the sale the way we did. I will move back in and keep the house clean, neat, tidy and welcoming and I believe I will find someone who loves it as much as I do.

We have a new front door. Or should I say old new front door. I went looking at tip shops this week to find a new door for the mud room. Due to the austerity measures I couldn’t buy a new door cause they’re over $300. Anyway, I wanted a farm door. A door with character.

I found one I was sort of happy with for $25 at one tip shop, but it had a plywood veneer and we hate that stuff. Especially for an external door. I figured I could change that but still… Then I saw another, much bigger and totally solid timber door. This one was $60 and was an 1920s deco door. Yeah. That was nicer, and who doesn’t love solid timber. But again, it wasn’t quite right. Not for $60. I’m becoming a cheapscate.

Then at the last minute I found my door. It was at the South Hobart tip shop.The front is panelled (which I love) and when I put in 2 glass panes, the windows will give me the light I wanted in the mud room. Best of all, I got it for $20!

We’ve put the door on top of the kitchen table I’m meant to be doing up as the door is more important than the table. The plan is to get started on it tomorrow.

I wanted to get started today but we decided to make it a tip day. We went for a trip to the tip to get rid of the unsightly pile of rubbish I’d been collecting near the wood shed. Sad when our fun outing for the day was a trip to the tip. At least the tip in New Norfolk has the best views!

Then we made a trip up to the bush at the back of our property to get some firewood. This involved gettng into Blue, Wayne’s decrepid old 4×4 which backfires more than it drives giving us whiplash, then, pulling my old trailer behind us, drive out onto the road then up the neighbour’s driveway, up an overgrown old track and through a hole in our fence back onto our land and our own overgrown track. (We haven’t been able to afford to fix our original fix on the ford so we can use our own road to the top of our property).

We have plenty of firewood up there. Wayne felled two dead trees yesterday and today I went up to help him chop and load the trailer. Love the great outdoors. Hate the spiders!

I had a huntsman on my shoulder at one stage. I smacked it off, then danced around in the ferns waving my T-shirt over my head screetching like a girl at the top of my lungs. Wayne’s disappointed he missed that.


(In deference to aracnophobe readers, the image of the spider has been removed)

So, having displaced a few huntsmen today, we have a stack of firewood. At least one week’s worth. Now we just have to get another 433 loads to get us through winter.

Sure, we left our run a bit late. But its not like we’ve been sitting on our butts, is it?

This having our own firewood and not needing to buy sure has its downside…  

z

*The porch was a great idea and one inspired by the decision to sell my house in Fentonbury. As things tend to do, this one thing lead to another. (Like my gardening in Melbourne: I trimmed the ivy in the back yard then had to replace the fence when it collapsed once the ivy was removed.) Building has a deck necessitated new gutters. In hindsight, spending money on the deck and enclosing the porch to create a mudroom could have waited till my house was sold… but then I thought I ‘its rented, I’ll sell it, we will manage fine’. Hightsight is a good thing.