My alarm woke me at 4.30am on Friday morning.
I had intended to wash and blow dry my hair on Thursday afternoon/evening to save time, but that didn't happen so I had to set my alarm an hour earlier than planned so that I could do that before we left at 6am.
I also hadn't packed my overnight bag, so that had to be figured into my preparation time too.
Adoring Husband was kind enough to purchase my morning coffee and was home just before The Motivator arrived to pick me up. Thank goodness!
There was only a slight glitch in our plans ... when I realised, before we'd left my street, that I didn't have my ticket to the event we were attending.
Ugh.
So, we returned to the house ... luckily we caught Adoring Husband as he was leaving because I also didn't have my key to get in!! I grabbed my key and searched for the ticket to no avail.
We drove to the shop and I found the ticket inside the daily planner.
This meant that we left town about 20 minutes later than planned. It wasn't a problem because we had hours to spare before the event so that we could drop into IKEA beforehand.
It was a smooth, uneventful trip to North Lakes and we parked outside the IKEA lifts before 9.30am.
We knew exactly what we were looking for and were pretty efficient with our time and our searching - except for that 20 minutes when we stopped to discuss rearranging the displays and lounge area in the shop - that set us back.
I kept an eye on the time and announced every 15 minutes how much time we had to spare.
With 30 minutes left on the clock, we arrived at the storage area where we had to locate the aisle and shelf position for each item we had on our list. We had two trolleys full of boxes by the time we reached the self serve checkout.
I scanned my personal purchases and The Motivator scanned hers, then together we rushed through the shop items, restacked them on the trolleys, finished paying and rushed to the lifts.
Twelve minutes til we had to leave the carpark and we were clearing out the back of the car and laying down the seats, stacking everything in as compactly and efficiently as possible.
Six minutes remaining and I changed my top in the middle of the carpark!! Can you believe that!? The Motivator changed her bottoms in the middle of the carpark!!
I ran back to the shopping centre to purchase some sushi because we weren't going to be anywhere near food before we would be sitting for two hours with empty bellies at the event. The Motivator ran to the nearest bathroom to change her top and freshen her make up.
We left the carpark four minutes later than planned.
Thanks to The Motivator, we turned left instead of right as we drove out of the carpark. That lost us two minutes.
Thanks to me, we took another wrong turn at a set of traffic lights and by the time we found somewhere to turn around, it meant we lost another four minutes.
We arrived at the location of the event and it took us five minutes to find a parking space. We were rushing into the cinema complex, where the event was being held, five minutes after it was supposed to start!
We were seating ourselves in the event seven minutes late, but Denise Duffield Thomas had only begun to speak about two minutes earlier.
Talk about a close call!
It was a value packed seminar and over so quickly! We stood in a queue to meet Denise, chatting with a lovely young lady and then briefly talked to Denise and got this ...
The Motivator and I slowed down a bit and began to wander the Westfield Shopping Centre. We stopped at 'Secrets' Jewellers and The Motivator found a ring that she liked, got some information about it and we decided we needed coffee.
We shared a couple of small GF slices and drank some delicious coffee while we chatted about the event and talked about the shop.
We returned to 'Secrets' where I found a beautiful ring that I decided would be the perfect ten year anniversary gift from Adoring Husband. So I put the ring details on a wish list and told them that I would get Adoring Husband to call them some time in the future to discuss purchasing said ring
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The Sheridan outlet in Aspley was our next stop, which was a 12 minute drive from Westfield. I purchased a set of bath towels. Their original price was $99 for the pair and I paid $36 for the pair! I also bought AH a beach towel at 60% off. Don't you love a good bargain?!
We scoured an outdoor centre for bar settings and then spent some time in Freedom Furniture. I love that shop, but found nothing that we need in there.
It took us an hour to drive to the motel that I had booked us into and we arrived there just after 6pm. At 6.30pm we went in search of some food. We were both exhausted and didn't want to travel too much further so we discovered, just around the corner from our motel, the Woombye Pub.
It had a great little restaurant and we enjoyed Crunchy Crackle Pork Belly with kipfler potatoes, broccolini and blueberry jus. We had a beverage each and shared a dessert of pavlova. The staff were lovely and the food was fabulous, but we were exhausted and were back at the room by 8pm.
The motel's free wifi was pathetically slow so we didn't get to play online or do any work related activities as planned ... probably a good thing because our brains were mush by then anyway.
Our room had two queen beds so it was lovely to really spread out and I slept soundly all night. The motel was right on a main road, but the noise was minimal and the bed was sooooo comfortable.
We woke early the next morning and were on the road a little after 6.30am. AH was opening the shop for us so that we didn't have to stress about being right on time.
He did a great job taking care of the shop while we were away, without too many hiccups, and it was nice that so many people cared enough to check in on him, provide him with fresh coffee and deliver some food. He is well loved and respected I think.
The Motivator worked today and I returned home with AH.
I planned on creating some art, but ended up in bed at 12.30pm and slept for more than three hours!
That 27 hours wore me out!
It's almost 10.30pm and I think I might return to bed now. The art can wait til tomorrow.
Nite all.
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