Feeling it

My age … I’m feeling my age.

As much as I love the Winter weather, my bones are aching from the cold.

I haven’t had a Sunday in bed for 4 weeks and I think it will be another week before I can enjoy that luxury.

No days for relaxation, rejuvenation and regeneration which is wearing me down a bit.

Today was very busy in the shop  with good sales + the art class which was a lot of fun.

I prepared an avocado dip for the girls to have with their crackers while we enjoyed our beverages after art. We also savoured some spicy carrot cake.

There wasn’t too much mess and we were finished the class much earlier than usual. We all chose an easy technique with pretty good results.

We were home before 5pm.

We bought frozen snapper from the fisheries freezer but the weather is so bloody cold, even putting it outside failed to help it thaw. I threw my hands in the air and declared “you can just fend for yourselves!”

No dinner for me - I just couldn’t be bothered and I wasn’t hungry.

I am in bed typing this and I expect to be asleep in about 30 minutes.

Have a happy Sunday.

Nite all.

Hurt My Brain

Thank goodness, after a good nights sleep, Adoring Husband was feeling much better this morning.

It was another chilly start to the day and I left it til the last minute to get out of bed and prepare myself for work. I had a quick hot shower to make those preparations a little more comfortable.

It’s strange for me to be feeling the cold and I think I’m very under prepared for winter! I possess one jumper, two long sleeved t-shirts and two very old and daggy zip up sloppy joes. Winter is usually very short lived up here so hopefully it will be a ‘typical’ season.

My morning was good for sales and my customers paid cash, which meant that I was unaware of a problem with my square reader until the afternoon when I had a customer who’s only option was to pay by card.

There had been an update the previous evening as well as a 6 hour period during the night where the internet was down because of Telstra upgrades.

This caused me hours of mental anguish as I attempted to find a fix. I tried a dozen different fixes that were suggested online and nothing worked. 

I lost a decent sale.

Then Bubbles arrived.

It took her ten minutes to rectify the problem.

Thank you very much.

There is a big lawn bowls competition for men in town this weekend which means there are approximately 300 wives and partners looking for a shopping experience which I hope I can provide. My devices need to be in working order for me to have a successful day.

I sent all my tax info through to the appropriate human, so that’s an important task marked off my list.

Tomorrow is art class day so AH and Bubbles helped put the drop sheet down and set up the tables and plastic covers. Two of the art girls usually do the rest on Saturday morning.

We played two games of pub trivia this afternoon and Adoring Husband won both! 

It’s now almost 8pm and I’m feeling very weary - I hurt my brain with all that problem solving today and it needs to rest.

Oh and a lovely family pic … 

Nite all.

Tax Time

And so the fun begins.

It was a slow day in the shop for sales.

Mrs Bucket visited me for about 30 minutes, followed closely by The Brains Trust who is recovering well from her cold. No hugs til the germs disappear completely though.

I spent a good portion of the day gathering all the paperwork for the end of last financial year. I was Roz’s Happy Place for exactly 24 days and oopsy… I didn’t do my taxes yet!

Got that sorted.

Last night, Bubbles priced and bagged about 45 pieces of my old jewellery so that I can sell it at the shop as ‘pre-loved’ so I found a display case and made a sign.

Queensland lost the first State of Origin game by an embarrassing margin.

Adoring Husband called me a loser.

Today was freezing! Just 4°C this morning which I believe is the coldest it’s been since we moved here 13 years ago. For the first time, I wore a jumper in QLD! It reached 18° maximum.

We played Trivial Pursuit this afternoon. Nobody won but I had all my pieces of pie so I was heading in the right direction.

I cooked crispy skinned chicken for dinner, served with salad. My dinner was strawberries, blueberries and banana with ice cream and cream.

Adoring Husband was not well after dinner and climbed into bed at about 7pm. He was snoring very quickly.

I think I might be snoring myself very soon!

Nite all.

Painful

It has been a painful game to watch.

The first State of Origin game is being played tonight in Townsville and Queensland is losing in a convincing fashion.

It really was expected but I hoped that the Queensland team would dig deep and find that strength of character that they are famous for and make us Queenslanders proud.

There is still 26 minutes of the game remaining but we are losing by 20 points and I don’t hold much hope.

Sad but true.

Work was enjoyable today, starting with meditation which Bubbles attended and enjoyed. She had some aha moments and got to meet the regular girls.

Bubbles stayed for the entire day and we spent a considerable amount of time talking shop and comparing customer stories.

The day passed quickly.

The three of us spent the afternoon playing ‘music trivia’ (which I won) and ‘categories’ (which I won) but third time wasn’t lucky because we are now losing State of Origin by 38 points!!!

Adoring Husband is sitting very smugly in his chair enjoying this win - considering how many losses he’s had to endure over the last ten years, I guess I have to let him have a win every so often.

I think this will be a big series win for the blues this year. I have no faith in the lousy coach QLD selected, nor do I have any respect for our captain, Daly Cherry-Evans who is one of the most inconsistent players and rarely performs well under pressure.

But don’t get me started 😬

I believe I shall put my tail between my legs and prepare for bed.

Sucks to be a loser 🤪

Nite all.

Recovering

After our big Monday outing, I was still in recovery mode today.

Even after a full nights sleep, I could feel that my body was not functioning at full capacity, so it was working on autopilot for most of the day.

Four of us for coffee, but it was loud and animated … looking forward to a seafood party at Blond Bombshell’s house!

A delivery of Intrinsic stock arrived but it didn’t take long to check, price and display.

The Happy Hippy came to clean.

Bubbles came for a visit.

The Journaling class went well.

The training room is set up for meditation.

Sales were good.

It’s now 11pm and I need sleep 😳

Nite all.

Roller Coaster Monday

We left the house at 6.50am to begin our journey south to Nambour where we were picking up Bubbles from her friend’s workplace.

The trip was uneventful until just after the Maryborough turnoff when a big red warning light appeared on the dashboard telling us to check the DPF (diesel particulate filter). 

We stopped at a service station and checked the manual which told us to drive at 40kph for twenty minutes.

Instead, Adoring Husband called the Mitsubishi service centre who told us not to drive a long distance without having it checked.

We drove the short way back to Maryborough only to discover that there was no service centre, only a showroom.

Our only alternative was to drive to Hervey Bay to our usual service centre.

As we drove through Maryborough, the warning light disappeared! We must have been driving slowly enough to fix the problem … just as the manual suggested!

So we decided to take our chances and continue heading south.

Fifty seven kms from Gympie, the warning light returned! As luck would have it, there was a long stretch of roadworks which forced us to drive for extended periods at 40 kph. The light went out.

Ten minutes from the Eumundi turnoff, AH was having trouble with neck pain and tremor, so we decided to stop for a short break and a coffee.

That’s when we realised the car key was missing.

It was obviously somewhere in the car but we couldn’t leave or lock the car without it.

We searched and we searched for about 10 or 15 minutes, until I decided to double check everywhere that AH had searched. I found it in a secret pocket of his jacket that was lying on the back seat. He had already checked the jacket 🙄

Almost FOUR hours after leaving home, we made it to Nambour. According to the GPS, the trip should have taken 2 hours and 16 minutes.

We found Bubbles and after hugs hello and hugs goodbye (for her friend), we dove a further 5 minutes to Wildlife HQ Zoo at the big pineapple.

This is some of what we did …

Bubbles and I fed the meerkats and then AH joined us to feed the Emperor Marmaset Monkeys. What a great experience. They are SO adorable.

We left, exhausted, at 2.30pm.

Again, we stopped at Eumundi for AH to have a break and some coffee. I purchased some Deep Heat to rub into AH’s neck to help ease the pain for the journey home.

It was a tough drive for him after such a big day, but we made it home safe n sound just after 6pm.

We also stopped at Beefys Pies and grabbed some GF frozen pies because we didn’t plan anything for dinner.

We are all exhausted and look how late it is already!

Nite all.

Was That Sunday?

Today was a great combination of ‘social’, ‘productive’ and ‘relaxing’.

While it was difficult to move myself out from under the covers so early this morning, it was worth feeling the chill on my skin to experience the day that was to come.

After a deliciously hot shower I rugged up in preparation for a chilly breezy date with my girls. I pedalled my trusty trike to the Lions Park where I was the first to arrive so I searched for a table that might soon have some warm sunshine beating down on it.

Five minutes later, all of the girls except The Brains Trust appeared. TBT was feeling under the weather so she kept her germs to herself and remained at home.

Next thing I know, there’s a tablecloth laid out with a plate full of cake slices and serviettes. Beauty had gone to the perfect amount of trouble for us and we all sat around with our tea and coffee and cake catching up with Lady Lynn’s news and she catching up with ours.

It was a lovely morning. Thankfully, the sun eventually warmed us up and a bit over an hour later, some of us headed to my shop so that Lady Lynn could purchase a poncho.

After a big hug goodbye, Lady Lynn went off to find Happy Harry and I aimed for the supermarket.

Before I got there, I was stopped by a local lady asking me if I sold coasters at the shop so I offered to take her there to look and she purchased a set there and then!

Ten minutes later I was in the supermarket at the counter when the woman who served me asked if I still had the bamboo pants in the shop and how much they were. I told her and she said that she wanted them. I offered to go get them for her right now and because she had the right cash in her purse she agreed.

So I made three sales without even opening the shop!

Knowing there was much to do at home, I reluctantly made my way there.

I finished sorting and decluttering the linen cupboard and the sheets that have been lined up on the family room couch for the last week, were finally returned to the top shelf of the cupboard.

I did many loads of washing.

I heated up some soup for lunch and made a delicious smoothie afterwards.

We sat down for lunch and watched Twilight - Eclipse, Shall We Dance and Ghost. 

We left the house to get Adoring Husband’s coffee and while he ordered that, I stopped at the shop to pick up Lady Lynn’s jumper that she left behind. On the way home we dropped the jumper off with friends who  will be visiting Lady Lynn this week.

At home I did a quick clean of the ensuite.

We cleared all the crap off the dining table - it’s amazing how quickly stuff accumulates there.

I cooked duck for dinner with a side of buttered cauliflower and broccoli.

We were disappointed to discover that we’d missed the football because it was on at 4pm and we thought it was going to be on tonight.

It’s now 10.30pm and we need to be up bright and early in the morning to go pick up Bubbles from Nambour. We’ll be going to Wildlife HQ to feed and cuddle the meerkats before we return home.

That means I need to sleep now.

Nite all.