Surprising

It was a surprisingly good day of sales at the shop! One of my best Saturdays ever.

Adoring Husband assembled my new tables this morning and I assisted him a couple of times between customers. I only got to sit down in the last 30 minutes when no customers came through the door.

It was noticeable today that some of my stock is very low and I need to order!

I also have to create my newsletter for January this weekend.

AH picked me up from work and after I did a load of washing and got yesterday’s washing off the line, I needed a nap. I lay down for 2 hours dozing on and off.

For dinner I made hash browns out of yesterday’s leftover roast vegetables and served them with Peking duck.

It seems with all this Covid nonsense, I’m going to miss Vegan Chickie’s wedding in Melbourne on 1st Feb. Disappointing, but necessary. I still haven’t met her fiancé and I haven’t seen Chicklet for over 2 years! Something’s gotta give! 

When I finally get down there, it will be the perfect time. The universe will make sure of it 🙏👍

We are all in bed early again tonight and I’m looking forward to a couple of days off. Beautiful Girl With Long Blonde Hair and I have plans for Monday. Perhaps we’ll get arty farty tomorrow (Sunday).

Right now, I will sleep.

Nite all.

First Day

It’s the first day of the rest if your life.

Eight years ago, I began a year long goal of writing on a piece of paper every day about something that made me happy. At the end of the year, there would be 365 pieces of paper to read - and all of them would be something to enjoy and celebrate.

Well, two weeks after I started, Adoring Husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and almost 2 weeks after that, we were hit by the tornado and life went a bit haywire. From memory, I think I had 18 pieces of paper in the jar by the 26th January and that’s where it stopped.

This year I’ve decided to have another go. I put the first happy piece of paper in my kombi van money box this evening and plan on doing it every day this year.

It was nice to have the day off and I slept until 8.20am.

Adoring Husband and I drove into The Bay where I bought 2 tables for the arts a crafts area of the shop from Officeworks - along with LOTS of other bits and pieces because, well, it’s Officeworks!

I braved Bunnings and purchased 8 small cans of different coloured paint because Beautiful Girl With Long Blonde Hair and I are going to paint that big bare wall next to the pool.

I also got some paint brushes from there.

We did some grocery shopping and on my way to Spotlight, I stopped at Strandbags and got myself a new wheelie laptop/briefcase because my old one has a broken wheel. It was on sale from $250 down to $150! Bargain!

I wanted some timber sign boards from Spotlight but unfortunately, there were none, so I stocked up on some canvases and Glue-All for the art class.

It was about 4pm when we arrived home and after I transferred everything from my old wheelie bag to the new one, I prepared a giant pan of mixed roast vegetables for dinner accompanied by chicken wings and home made gravy. It was nutritious and delicious. Potato, sweet potato, pumpkin, carrot, parsnip, turnip, onion and capsicum. A side dish of garlic buttered snow peas. Drooling.

No trivia tonight. We all shuffled to bed at 7.30pm and now, all of a sudden, it’s 11.30pm!

How did that happen?!

Nite all.

Happy New Year!

I’ve  had a fabulous end to 2020!

It was a crazy busy day in the shop and I broke sales records!

In between all of those customers, there were visits from new and old friends and regular customers for new year hugs which was just lovely.

One of the girls from meditation, who I now consider a friend, dropped in for a coffee. She was there for a while but I had to serve so many customers, we didn’t get to spend much real time together.

Adoring Husband picked me up at 2pm and I sat down to do some book work before we decided to go for a grounding walk on the beach. 

The tide was all the way out so the walking was difficult with the wind and the stones, weed and broken shells on the beach. We didn’t walk far.

As we walked back to the car, one of my art girls who lives on the waterfront came out and invited us for a drink. What a beautiful home she has! Her husband was very welcoming, as was her puppy dog and we sat out the front on her alcove verandah, drinking wine and watching the world go by ...

We hadn’t eaten all day so one glass of wine went straight to our head!

We enjoyed barramundi and salad for dinner and played trivia til 9pm.

It’s now midnight ...

Time for sleep!

Nite all.

Not So Flat Out

Beautiful, glorious, delicious steady rain!

24 hours of it!

And more to come. A LOT more!

The rain did keep the customers away from the shop though. It was an average day of sales so I can’t complain and I must say it was quite peaceful for most of the day.

I don’t know why, but for some reason, by the time I arrived home I was feeling incredibly agitated. I was snapping at both Adoring Husband and Beautiful Girl With Long Blonde Hair.

I spent some time fixing my new water filter while hedging a million questions from AH - which agitated me even more 😳

I decided that I needed some time out to process my unreasonable mood. I locked myself in the bedroom, put my earplugs in, turned up the volume and selected a 35 minute meditation video from YouTube  by The Gypsy.

It was exactly what I needed and I came out the other side feeling completely recharged and much lighter and happier.

It just occurred to me that I should have apologised to my housemates for being such an evil, bitter and twisted bee, but I didn’t. I’m a bad friend and wife.

We had a very early dinner of lamb loin chops on the barbecue with salads that BGWLBH prepared and we played trivia until 7.30pm - which appears to be our standard bed time.

I played Pop Master at 8.30pm and have been guzzling water from my new super duper Walter filter. I’m guessing I’ll be up a couple of times during the night for obvious reasons 😳.

Time to fall asleep to the sound of rain on the roof.

Nite all.

Flat Out!

It was a busy day at the shop.

So busy, I barely had any time with my girls for morning coffee 😕

I had no time to do anything between customers because there was always somebody in the shop and at one stage, I had 20 people wandering around! It was the first time I’d thought of putting the ‘maximum number of patrons’ sign on the door!

Needless to say, sales were good.

My cleaner came an hour earlier than usual because there was no journaling class and I wanted to leave the shop at 2pm. She dusted and chatted with me and some of the customers but still got the job done.

I received a LOT of parcels in the mail today, some of which should have arrived before Christmas because they included Beautiful Girl With Long Blonde Hair’s gifts from me.

A few years ago, I purchased charm bracelets for both of us so that we could buy a charm for every holiday, but up until now, we didn’t have any charm except the car to represent our road trips.

This year I found:

• A Halloween pumpkin for the great Halloween dress up as zombie brides
• A koala for the wild one we found in a tree at Mallacoota
• A mobile phone to represent our ‘selfie’ road trip
• A dog to remind us of our babies who are no longer with us
• Our first initial
• Our birth stone
• Angel wings for protection

I put each charm in their own individual box, wrapped each box in Christmas paper and presented them to BGWLBH this afternoon.

We also received a gift from Vegan Chickie which was a box of pop master quiz question cards. It took us a bit over an hour, with Adoring Husband reading the questions and our scores were BGWLBH 33 - ME 32.5! Soooooooo close!

We all, at the suggestion of BGWLBH, went for a grounding walk along the beach this afternoon. It was difficult to find the motivation after such a big day, but we’re glad we pushed ourselves because we always feel good for it.

Barramundi for dinner with a selection of three salads made by BGWLBH. Bloody delicious 😋 

I came to bed at 8.30pm and played pop master and this was followed by AH coming into the bedroom to tell me that my new water filter was leaking! I grudgingly got out of bed to inspect the damage, cleaned up the mess and made sure it was safe for the night.

Thank goodness he found it when he did because the filter is sitting on top of the mini freezer, so if water had leaked into the motor, it could have been a very expensive little exercise!

Anyway, it is rapidly approaching midnight so I should sleep.

Nite all.

Worth It

It was definitely worth opening the shop today.

Sales were good and in between customers I wrote up most of my January newsletter.

Adoring Husband arrived early to help me close the shop so that Beautiful Girl With Long Blonde Hair could pick me up and we could drive into The Bay for a shopping frenzy.

Of course, there was no shopping frenzy because today was recognised as the Boxing Day Public holiday and very few shops were open. We went to the RSL Club instead. I won $100 on keno and BGWLBH broke even for the afternoon.

We were there for about 2 hours and walked over to Coles to do some grocery shopping before driving home.

I spent a good portion of time chopping up fruit and bagging it for the freezer so that we can make smoothies every morning. I used 1 pineapple, 2 punnets of blueberries, 2 punnets of strawberries, a punnet of boysenberries, a punnet of blackberries, a punnet of red currents, 3 bananas, 2 mangoes, 2 pears, 4 plums and 3 kiwi fruit.

That all made 9 bags of chopped mixed fruit.

We threw together a salad and ate that with leftover roast pork and ham for dinner.

It was 6.30pm and we all declared that we were exhausted and headed our separate ways.

I was in bed when I received a text telling me that the BBC2 Pop Master quiz was recommencing tonight, so I played that.

Adoring Husband is sound asleep beside me and now it’s my turn to sleep.

Nite all.

Pretty Average

I opted to open the shop today and Monday from 9am - 1pm.

Considering how many people are around, sales were pretty average - not holiday average - but normal average. Quite surprising really.

Adoring Husband helped me close up shop and I came home to enjoy a late lunch of prawns with mango and avocado.

We played trivia for a couple of hours and then put the game on hold while we prepared some fresh salads for dinner.

The three of us decided on a grounding walk along the beach ...

We had an early dinner and I felt exhausted so Beautiful Girl With Long Blonde Hair walked over to observe the bats on her own. AH decided to go for a ride on his bicycle to look at the bats. Apparently the bats were a bit lazy this evening and not as active as previous evenings.

We’ve all retired to bed extra early. I know that I am feeling very weary today and my energy levels are quite low. A good night’s sleep is what I need - with minimum pee stops during the night!

Nite all.