Zawsted

Translation: Exhausted

This morning, we, according to Knight in Shining Armour, had the best fun so far.

We drove to the driving range with a handful of clubs in the back of the car, purchased two large buckets of golf balls and then we four proceeded to belt the balls into the middle of the range - the boys aiming for the car shell situated at the 175 metre mark.

Bubbles had never hit a golf ball before but did very well to hit most of the balls.

Adoring Husband was belting the crapoli out of the balls and mostly hit them way past the car.

KISA was doing a good job too but mostly watching AH in awe.

Considering it's been about five years since I hit a golf ball, I was very happy with my effort. Most of my balls went long and straight, but by jingoes my body is complaining this evening! Ankles, knees, hips, back, arms and hands ... all reminding me what I did today.

Bending over 60 times to place a golf ball on a tee and then swinging 60 times to hit said ball.

Tomorrow could be telling.

From there, we drove to Pialba and did some shopping at Go Girl, Big W, Coles and Rockmans (not me). I found some beautiful shoes at Shoe Frenzy, but it was their last pair of this particular style and one of the jewelled buttons on one of the shoes was flawed, so I chose to leave the shoes on the shelf.

We then drove to a nearby op shop where I purchased an $8 dress for wearing over my bathers by the pool.

We were starving and it was almost 2pm so we drove to the fish and chip cafe at the water park.

If we had seen the cafe behind it, AH and I may have opted to eat there, but we only noticed the fish and chip shop, so we asked if they did any gluten free meals. They do GF crumbed fish and their chips are also GF, so AH and I ordered crumbed Snapper with chips.

The chips were crunchy on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside. The crumb on the fish was delicious and the fish was perfectly cooked. I will definitely eat there again, but the furniture was not very comfortable and the area not very comfortable or clean so I wouldn't recommend it for our luncheons.

We bought a coffee from the cafe next door before we departed the area and it was also delicious.

It was after 3.30pm when we arrived home. I unpacked all the groceries and then checked to see if my workshop participants had responded to my messages about the weekend. None of them had, so I followed up, but I've only heard back from one of them.

So now I've decided to cancel the workshop and since I already have some names for March, I'll make that class a bit bigger.

This gives me more time to play with the kids on their holiday.

Best Cousin in the World is coming for the night on Saturday. We'll be having a barbecue and she and Marco will get to see and use the new pool area and we'll probably play some games like 20 questions or trivia or cards against humanity.

I did a quick chicken curry for dinner - I didn't have any because I was still full from lunch!

The rest of the family ate like they hadn't eaten for a week!

Right now, we are watching our first rugby league game for the season and it's made us hungry for the beginning of the 2019 season.

I think I'll be in bed early to help my body recover from today's club swinging.

Nite all.

Missed it by That Much

My apologies for another missed blog post yesterday.

I had a full day, a late dinner and even struggled to fall asleep, but the brain wasn't capable of creating a blog post.

I was supposed to go to meditation on Wednesday morning, and I had every intention of doing so, but since I didn't fall asleep until after 1am, when my alarm went off at 6am, I just couldn't drag myself out of bed. I've had four nights in a row that I couldn't fall asleep until after 1am and it caught up to me.

The Brains Trust picked me up at 11am and we, along with Lady Lynn and Aggie 🤣, drove into The Bay where we decided to have lunch at the Tapas Bar.

Before we ate, we browsed through a few of the nearby shops. Not all of us spent money and the four of us had a fabulous time together. We laughed a lot - including a few snorts here and there - we enjoyed good food and good drinks and suddenly it was 2pm!

Before we drove home, we checked out the location of the accommodation where The Blonde Bombshell is having her 'celebration of life' gathering next month and then we did a bit of shopping at Stocklands. I had already purchased a pair of shoes and a top at shop near the Tapas Bar, but I added another top to my collection at Stocklands.

I checked my lotto ticket and had won $10.70 so I reinvested in another lotto ticket.

It was well after 4.30pm when I arrived home and by the time Adoring Husband and I picked up the meat order from the butcher and got my desk top computer from work, it was after 5pm.

I phoned Chicklet for her 8th birthday ...

... how in heaven's name did she get so old so quick!?? We must have spent more than 30 minutes on the phone while she told me about her day and the gifts that she received - dragon after dragon after dragon after dragon! That purple hair was looking pretty cool too.

Eventually, I had to cook dinner and compared to our usual meal time, it was certainly a late dinner for us all.

My priority after that was to edit some more wedding photos, so I spent a couple of hours doing that and sent them through to the brides before I went to bed - the computer seemed to be working very slowly, which was frustrating.

I was in bed before 11pm, and I watched one of my shows that I'd missed on the Channel 9 app before attempting to go to sleep.

Try as I might, I just couldn't relax enough to sleep, so it was after 2pm the last time I looked at the clock.

Ugh.

I had a hair appointment at 9am, so I had to be awake at a decent hour.

Very happy with the result.

I got to relax for about an hour and then it was my turn to cover for The Motivator at the shop while she attended her hair appointment.

Bubbles and Knight in Shining Armour joined me for the last hour of business and then helped me shut up shop.

We grabbed some take away coffees and headed home. Of course, it was necessary to go for a swim because it was stinking hot weather. We each enjoyed a beverage in the pool until it was time to cook dinner again.

On the menu tonight was crispy skinned chicken, pork, baked potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, capsicum, brussels sprouts, green beans, spinach and sun-dried tomatoes.

Adoring Husband baked chocolate brownies for dessert, which were delicious but boy did they give me a hell of a sugar hit!!

We played Trivial Pursuit and KISA won this one.

Here it is, well after 11pm and we plan on hitting some golf balls at the driving range tomorrow, so I'd best get some sleep.

Nite all.

Who's a Winner?

All three psychotic dogs can swim - confidently. I’ve tested them all by taking them to the middle of the pool and releasing them. They are strong swimmers and they can swim to the edge of the pool. Their tiny legs are unable to get them up the step to climb out, but I guarantee that they will NEVER voluntarily jump in the pool. They will only go into the water if we pick them up and physically take them in.

The sad humans in my family - all very sensitive and obviously terrified that the dogs may sink rather than swim, cannot let them go and literally hold them high in the water (see the video) while the dogs pretend to paddle.

Anyway, today was a fun day with the family.

After coffee with the girls, the fam picked me up and we drove into The Bay to the bowling alley where we played two games.

Adoring Husband had put our old bowling gear in the car so we had our own shoes and ball. In another life (Sydney) we were League bowlers, but since we moved here, we've bowled four times in ten years. Three times in Maryborough and once in Bundaberg - usually when we have visitors.

Today, I was the winner and bowled better than when I was in the league. I can't be bothered going in search of the score sheet right now, but I think my first game was 149 and the second game was 164. It felt good.

From there we drove to the other end of town to the Breakout Room.

I was led to believe that the Breakout Room was situated in the Cinema Complex, but I was wrong. It was on the esplanade - past where the old Shark Museum used to be.

It was a really fun hour. It was a pirate related theme and sometimes we were absolutely hopeless, but at other times we were amazing! We easily worked our way through some of the clues but others we were way off the mark and struggled.

The game requires you to break out of the room inside an hour. The record stands at 41 minutes for this particular theme. Our host told us, at the end of the hour, that we still had another 10 or 15 minutes worth of clues remaining, so we weren't even close.

We were left marooned!

After a visit to Stocklands where we needed sustenance before doing some grocery 🛒 shopping, we had one more stop before home and that was at IGA on the main drag where we hoped to purchase some of the new gluten free Vegemite.

No luck, but while we were in there, Adoring Husband made a surprise visit to the florist next door and bought me a big bunch of colourful gerberas ...

Because we had a late lunch, we opted for a very light dinner and following my hour long phone call with Vegan Chickie, we four sat down to a game of Trivial Pursuit ... where once again ... I was the winner!!!

What a successful day for me!

Actually it was an all round successful day because we all had fun together and we fit such a LOT into the day.

I have to say that I am absolutely exhausted now and desperately need a good night's sleep.

Nite all.

Catching Up

I saw The Gypsy for the first time in almost two weeks today.

So much has happened for both of us in that short period of time, we had a lot to catch up on, so there was a lot of fast chatter trying to fit as much information as possible into a short period of time.

At one stage there were nine potential customers wandering around the shop, but each of them left, one after the other, without purchasing a single thing and the remainder of the day saw minimal activity.

Bubbles had a treatment with The Gypsy at lunch time and then we got to spend a couple of hours together catching up, just the two of us, which was really nice.

At 3pm Adoring Husband came to drive Bubbles home because it was too hot to walk and he helped us close the shop. I pedalled home and it was even uncomfortable heat for me!

There was no question, I had to jump straight in the pool. I DID change out of my clothes and into bathers first, and I was joined by both Bubbles and Knight in Shining Armour.

Adoring Husband provided our beverages and it was after 5pm when I came inside to begin preparing  dinner, which wasn't too difficult.

I whipped up an avocado dip to have with some corn chips, then I baked some scalloped potato and sweet potato in duck fat in the oven. while AH cooked some steak and sausages on the barbecue. Oh and I made a quick tomato sauce.

Instead of playing games tonight, I am sitting here writing this blog post because I feel really tired and want to head to bed early.

Here are all the pieces from the paint pouring workshops on Saturday ...

... and it's good night from me.

Nite all.

So It Begins

I knew that today was going to be BIG.

I woke up feeling concerned about the possible outcomes for today, knowing that there would be a lot happening with a group of people who have never worked together before, most of whom don't have construction experience, but do have a good heart and a willingness to assist.

I took the time to do two meditations to give myself a positive mindset to start the day and I wrote in my gratitude journal to show how grateful I am for all the love and care that people were bringing to the day and to make sure that I stayed calm and positive through whatever was going to happen.

This happened ...

There were five men in my back yard beginning the construction of our Bali hut.

It was such a hot day and they all worked with enthusiasm until noon and got so much more done than Adoring Husband expected. He was very surprised and happy with the progress and very grateful for such wonderful help.

Only one small mistake occurred, which apparently, was easily fixed.

I pedalled to the shop mid morning to buy enough food to feed and nourish the boys after all the sweat and toil. I fed them sandwiches and fruit and they drank a whole slab of water bottles.

They were still smiling and laughing when they left so that's gotta be a good sign.

Needless to say there was a bit of sunburn that required treatment this evening. Knight in Shining Armour and Bubbles were plastered twice with the gel from my aloe vera plant which grows like crazy in a big pot in the back yard.

Aside from the construction work, we also spent a LOT of time IN the pool.

I made up a batch of butter chicken and rice for dinner with papadums on the side. It went down a treat. The kids and I played twenty questions and AH headed to bed early.

I can't believe it's 11pm already and I have to work tomorrow!

This is my bowl of crystals by the pool ...

There are 3 x rose quartz, a blue kyanite, a citrine, a selenite and an amethyst.

Nite all.