Nice to see you!

Three major events occurred for me last year (2010), all in the space of about 2 weeks. I turned 50. The following day I got married. Two weeks later, my oldest daughter became pregnant with her first child and my first grandchild.

Most middle-aged people will tell you that in their minds, they still feel 20 something. It's the same for me.

Wasn't it only yesterday that I was planning a night out with guys from the surf club? That gorgeous new perm. Flaired, cuffed denims and the red t-shirt with the off-the-shoulder frill. Corked platform wedgies. **sigh**

Suddenly I'm looking in the mirror and wondering how 30 years can flash by so damned quickly!

So here I am in cyberspace, sharing my genuine shock and horror with anyone who'll listen and maybe I'll even meet some other over 50s who find themselves in the same predicament!

Welcome to my dilemna!!

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Midnight Rambling

Well, as you can tell, I didn't get to post an update here last night!

Adoring Husband and I left home at about 8am yesterday to head south to the Sunny Coast. We stopped for a short break in Gympie and then continued through to arrive at 11am.

After a warm greeting from the Chicklet family and then dropping all of my paraphernalia at the house, we drove to 'Sunspace' cafe for lunch. It was a beautiful day and Chicklet got to play in the garden in the sunshine, first with her Dadu, then Poppy Barry and then me.

We enjoyed a pleasant lunch and left around 2pm so that AH could head back home before it got too late. I was sad to see him go, knowing that it will be almost 3 weeks before I get to see him again.

I had lots of play time with Chicklet and we climbed onto my bed, along with Vegan Chickie to watch the movie 'Inside Out'. The Bare-chested Chef tossed up a most delicious salad for dinner, which we all enjoyed very much.


Bath time with more than 50 new rubber duckies followed soon after, then it was story time in bed. Chicklet was very restless, so it was Mama who finally lulled her to sleep.    

Vegan Chickie and I then sat up talking til midnight, at which point, I conceded defeat, turned off my light and fell into a deep sleep for two hours - pee break - more deep sleep for four hours - dozing for an hour and then greeted by my smiley Chicklet!

We had another full day as the Bare-chested Chef dropped us off at Tewantin shopping centre on his way to work this morning.

Norma Jeans was our first stop where we spent about an hour sitting in the reading corner, enjoying a LARGE coffee and reading a few of the available kid's books from the book shelf.

We went searching for some interesting stickers for Chicklet to decorate her 'safe spot' and also did some grocery shopping. The lady in front of us spent $300 and didn't collect the dinosaur cards that she was entitled to, so the girl on the checkout kindly gave us her share as well as ours! She was immediately crowned 'our favourite check out person EVER'.

Chicklet has the dinosaur book and this morning only needed 20 more cards to fill the book (there are approximately 80 cards to collect). With our haul today, she only needs 6 more to complete the book!

After the supermarket, we headed up the hill to the children's park where Chicklet loves to play, but to our surprise, it was being upgraded and will not be finished for three weeks!! That was terribly disappointing for all of us because it was going to be a part of our daily itinerary. I guess we now need a Plan B.

Our original plan for today, was to catch the bus from that park to Civic where there is an indoor play area for kids, and we would have had a leisurely lunch while Chicklet played. Unfortunately, the day was much warmer than expected, Vegan Chickie had only 2-3 hours sleep the night before and I got a little carried away at the supermarket, so we had to carry more heavy bags than expected.

Taking all of that into consideration, we decided to catch the bus directly home. When I say 'directly' home, I mean 'as close to home as possible' because there is still about a kilometre to walk from the bus stop to home.

It's a pleasant enough walk. Even though it's a large housing estate, the streets are lined with tall trees and the houses back on to heavy wooded bushland, so there is shade, the birds are singing and the wind is rustling the leaves high in the trees. The footpath is paved the whole way, so it's a comfortable walk.

We arrived home safensound and after a light lunch, Vegan Chickie attempted to have a nap while Chicklet and I played. Chicklet decided to give one of her new purchases, a rubber squeaky duck, a workout. I expected her to get bored of the squeaking after 5 minutes, however, it was still squawking long and loud and hard 20-30 minutes later, at which time poor Vegan Chickie came skulking heavily through the house with a seriously furrowed brow.

She looked at me and said 'Is that not annoying the crap out of you???' I replied 'Well, I hoped that she would get sick of it before I did. Obviously she has more stamina than I bargained for!'

I had closed the bedroom door, but apparently, it didn't make any difference to the sound. Oops.

We coaxed the duck out of her hands by promising a swing out in the garden. Her stamina did not extend to swinging today .. it lasted about 3 minutes. We played catch for about ten minutes and then hit the sand pit for about 15 minutes.

An early bath time seemed like a good idea and calmed her down somewhat.

Chicklet watched Wile E Coyote cartoons while I prepared dinner .. just a simple chicken, broccolini, asparagus and sweet potato dish. Chicklet tried sweet potato but declared that it was 'yuk'. She wasn't very excited by my choice of dinner, so after a few slow mouthfuls, she decided that her play room was more exciting than the dinner table.

She fell asleep before we could even think about story time tonight. It seems we wore her out!

Adoring Husband experienced a bit of unexpected excitement at home this afternoon. A bat and her baby got caught in some netting that we had around our peach tree, so he called the RSPCA who sent a couple of ladies out to rescue them ...


AH was very impressed by their efforts and when he discovered that they were volunteers who even had to pay for their own fuel when rescuing our wildlife, he made a generous donation to the cause.

We had attempted to net our peach tree this year because we didn't get any peaches from it last year due to the birds. We had a small piece of old netting (apparently you can get 'bat friendly' netting these days) that AH had in his shed and it wasn't even big enough to protect the tree. We should have taken it down because it actually served no purpose at all .. except to trap unsuspecting bats obviously.

We have plenty of fruit trees in our back yard that the birds and bats steel from. Mangoes, mulberries, grapes etc. I guess they can take our peaches as well.

Well, it's almost 10pm, so I will attempt to get a better (or longer) night's sleep tonight. I'm not sure what's on the agenda for tomorrow, but as long as there is good coffee, I'll be happy.

Nite all.


No comments: