Brain Blockage

I had a whole day to GSD.

So why didn't I get GSD???

I have a definite brain blockage and I'm not sure how to clear it!

Something is stopping me from sitting at my desk. It's strong. I can feel it, but I don't recognise what it is, so I don't know how to overcome this problem.

I will give it some attention tomorrow, because once again, I have a whole day to GSD.

This morning, I received two packages. This was one of them ...

... and THIS was the packaging for such a tiny item ...

It's time to send a meaningful email to zulily and have a word to them about their environmental duty to the planet. That box is big enough to fit a pair of shoes inside it!

Anyway, it's midnight. I'm off to bed.

Nite all.

Out of Sorts

I just couldn't seem to get myself organised today.

Perhaps it was because I forgot to make a 'to do' list?!

I swept the floors and then priced some new stock to put out on my table.

Adoring Husband collected the mail and one of my Pillow Talk orders arrived, so I unpacked my lovely new hand towels and aqua waste paper bin.

Beauty made a quick visit and after she left, I pedalled to Reality TV Queen's house to deliver her LeReve order.

I'd planned for it to be a short visit so that I could spend the day working, but she had invited The Blonde Bombshell (aka yip yip) to join us, so I was obliged to hang around quite a bit longer and it was almost midday by the time I returned home. It was a good visit and I had a nice time with the girls.

I made lunch for Adoring Husband while he spent a ridiculous amount of time on 'hold' waiting for somebody from Dyson to speak to him regarding our cordless vacuum cleaner which hasn't worked for some time. The wait was worth it and it seems we have a satisfactory result.

He then left to run some errands in The Bay and pick up our FROG box. This gave me some alone time to GSD.

I had no idea where to even start.

I finished pricing the last of the jewellery and I tidied my desk. Then I sat down and looked blankly at my monitor. I had one natural gemstone pendant that I couldn't find the price for, so I decided to go into the seller's website and search for the price.

Annoyingly, the site kept giving me a user error, so I couldn't go any further than the first page. I attempted a few different fixes to get past the problem, but none of them worked and eventually I gave up.

I remembered that I had some clothes in the machine and on the line, so I resorted to spending time with my washing basket and folding and sorting and hanging and blah blah blah.

AH arrived home with coffee and the organic food, so I unpacked the FROG box and then sat down to enjoy my coffee.

AH has SES duties tonight so I whipped up a quick dinner for him before he left and now I'm switching between channels on TV sharing my time evenly between the football and Big Bang Theory.

I think I'll head to bed and rest my brain - hopefully it will work more efficiently tomorrow.

Nite all.  

Lotta Ladies. Lotta Noise.

I didn't need to be ready for my ride to lunch until 11am, so I had plenty of time to get ready this morning ... in theory.

The trouble was that I asked Adoring Husband to go to the butcher to pick up our meat order and to check the mail while he was there.

He came home from the Post Office with a package for me, which was full of new bracelets and snap buttons. There were 19 new buttons (not counting the two at the bottom of the first row).

I simply had no choice but to go through them all one by one, trying the buttons on different bracelets, putting combinations of buttons together on the 5 button bracelets and creating the perfect bracelet to wear to lunch today!

Some time later, after the excitement and novelty wore off for me, I realised that it was 10.15am!! This meant that I only had 45 minutes to get ready.

Ugh.

Due to my self imposed time restraints, I had to forego washing my hair and rushed around like a chook with it's head cut off to get ready in time for my lift!

Maid Marian arrived right on time and luckily it only took me a minute to finish racing around and be ready to walk out the door.

I think there were 23 of us at lunch today. We were the only people in the restaurant and made a hell of a noise all talking over the top of each other attempting to catch up on our news.

I had to put my fingers in my mouth to whistle very loudly and capture their attention for this photo!

Beauty was nice enough to get this photo of me with the lovely Tweedle Dee...

Lunch was interesting. It was at an Irish Pub and I don't think I've ever seen so much food served on such large plates for each person. Very few of us were able to eat everything on our plates (as you can see by the plate in front of me).

I had Chicken and Prawns with mash and vegetables. It was nice and I received the pensioner discount without even asking for it! I'm thinking that I should probably be insulted lol, but grateful to pay $27 instead of the price on the menu which was $30. My vodka and tonic cost me $6 and my coffee only cost $3!

After we all parted ways, a few of us took a slight detour and spent some time at the local Bowls Club before returning home.

It was a good day and I'm glad that Tweedle Dee convinced me to go.

Next month will be a trip across the river on the barge to Woodgate, where we will have Christmas in July at the pub. I'm looking forward to that one and we've already fully booked the boat.

I'm looking forward, also, to a quiet day at home tomorrow, although I have a few visitors coming to look at my jewellery and Reality TV Queen will be picking up her Le Reve order that was delivered while she was away.

I may even have an early night tonight!

Nite all.

Will I? Or Won't I?

I had decided to NOT attend this month's lady's luncheon because the GF options on the menu of the selected restaurant, were very limited.

However, Reality TV Queen is back from her extended holiday and will be in attendance, along with 21 or 22 other ladies. That's a big crowd and the only really important person who will be missing from this lunch, is Lady Lynn (sad face).

So I've decided that I WILL attend and to take a piece of cooked chicken with me and order a garden salad to have with it.

Adoring Husband seems to think that I could be asked to leave if I do that. If that's the case, I have a back up plan haha.

It's my little secret.

We had a great coffee morning with seven of us all cackling like mother hens around the table and I didn't get home until after 11am.

I wasted an hour fluffing about until Adoring Husband returned home from SES duties and then made him some lunch before retreating to my workspace.

I watched some training videos in the Academy, researched some additional plugins for my website and partially wrote a post for the Life As Roz Knows It blog.

It was great to receive a phone call from Number One Son this evening and we talked for about 30 minutes before dinner. He has applied for a job in Sydney and it's looking pretty positive at this point. Good luck to him!!

That's all folks!

Nite all.

A Little Surprise

I just happened to be browsing through my 'saved' posts from Facebook and found one that I posted way back in 2009.

It was a photo of the front of our house just after we moved in...

Then there was a series of photos taken after we landscaped the front garden ...

So I headed out the front with my phone and took photos of what it looks like today ...

There are lots of dead frangipani leaves over the front lawn at the moment because it's Winter and that's what they do! We are not the kind of people to make it spotless every day and the only time our front entry gets used, is when people visit us unexpectedly.

If we know people are visiting, we usher them in through the garage and into our dining/family room area, so our front porch and entry are always a bit of a mess with dirt and leaves and stray gravel from the garden.

It's kind of embarrassing because everyone we know has a lovely entrance to their home, but it is what it is and we don't care enough to give that much of a rat's pizzle haha.

Anyway, the point of the photos is to show how things have grown and changed in nine years!

My day has been filled with things OTHER than what I'd planned! No decluttering and no work at my desk. I was easily distracted today.

Adoring Husband decided to work on the back lawns, including whipper snipping and mowing, so this meant that I had to remove all the clothes from the washing line. Of course, this meant folding everything (remember, there was all the bedding from yesterday + more) and putting it all away blah blah blah.

The bath mats were still a little damp, so when AH finished the laundry area, he called me from my desk to let me know I could rehang these items. By this time, the next load of washing (which included all the ekoWorx cloths that I've been using in my cleaning frenzy) was ready to hang out. *sigh*

I decided to pedal to the Post Office to check our mail. No mail, but I browsed through the supermarket and discovered that cauliflowers were on sale. Cauliflower and leek soup sounded like a delicious idea, so I bought everything that I needed and headed home.

The first thing I did was make lunch for AH who had done as much of the lawn as he was capable of for the day.

Then I got started on the soup. It took much longer than I expected and by the time I finished packaging it and cleaning up the kitchen, it was after 3pm and I felt the need to put my feet up.

I am now in my office, where I was going to do some work, but once again, I was distracted by this blog post.

It's time to cook dinner, so here is where I sign off ... with a little side note to say that I did NOT get a perfect round in my footy tipping this week, because the last game of the round yesterday brought great disappointment to me. *another sigh*

Nite all.

Declutter Day One

I woke up late, relaxed in bed until 10.30am and decided that I would spend the morning doing the last thing on yesterday's declutter list that I told you about. That is, clearing the dressing table and culling my jewellery.

I decided to spend the morning doing that and then the afternoon at my desk.

What a joke.

I spent two and a half hours clearing and culling, then stopped to make lunch. Adoring Husband was working, mowing the lawns at the shops so he needed sustenance in between jobs.

Before I got back to the culling, I had to package up the chicken broth that I'd had simmering overnight, so that took up a bit of time - especially because I spilt half a container on the floor!! I called the dogs in to do some of the cleaning job for me, but only one of them was interested in licking it up and she took too long, so I had no choice but to do the entire job myself.

 
After that, it took me more than an hour to finish clearing and culling the jewellery.

I threw away a whole shopping bag of jewellery, cardboard tags off clothes, jewellery cleaning cloths, Friday night raffle tickets (that I'd been saving up to put into the bucket for the end of month draw - but I NEVER remember to take them so they are GONE now), pens and old make up.

I tossed all of those single earrings that I'd kept in case I ever found it's partner. I got rid of broken chains, or chains that I hadn't worn in years. I threw away all the old rings that I'd bought at markets and crystal shops - the ones that I never wear because they require constant cleaning. Everything that was broken - that I intended on repairing, but never got around to it  -  is now gone.

I'm certain that I could probably go through it all tomorrow and cull half as much stuff again. There are items that I no longer wear, but which have such amazing memories attached, that I just can't part with them. Quite a few pieces that belonged to my Mum and I know that my girls won't want them when I'm gone, but I just can't let them go yet. Jewellery that I made myself and I no longer wear, but 'might' in the future.

My beautiful leather jewellery box needs replacing, but this was the first birthday present that Adoring Husband gave me thirteen years ago and I don't want to let it go. Both the locks on it are broken, which means that the entire front wall of the box has to lay open permanently. Maybe AH can find a way to fix it for me.

It was well after 3pm when I finally finished this chore! By this time, the first footy match of the day was half over, so I sat down with my coffee that Adoring Husband brought home for me and put my feet up.

So far, I have all the footy tips correct this week. The game that I was worried about last night ended up having a result in my favour when they ended the 80 minutes tied and it went into golden point. My team kicked the field goal to win by one point!! The final score 25-24.

Right now, Sharks are playing Manly. I've tipped Sharks and they are losing by 7 points at half time. Eep. Adoring Husband (who is a big Sharks supporter) can't handle the stress and has opted to sit outside and read his book!

I would like, very much, to spend the entire day tomorrow, at my desk, however, my mind keeps directing me to the linen cupboard in the laundry, so I'll wait until tomorrow morning and decide then what I deem to be more important.

For now, I'm watching the end of the footy, before starting on my duck dinner.

Nite all.