Speechless, again..

.. what with one thing and another.  But this is not a whinge!

Our back yard, before the builders started:

And now look what's happening!! Only 5 weeks in and wow!

Ok, ok, these *may* not be an accurate representation of the work. They are certainly an accurate representation of how I feel about it though!  The builders have been considerate, extremely fast, considerate, masterful, considerate, expert, thoughtful, and considerate. They re-jigged the schedule of works to allow a major tweak to the timing so we don't find ourselves homeless in November.  They 'get' all sorts of things about how to proceed after the house is divided into 'ours' and 'theirs' (ie we will live in part of the renovated house while they finish the other part) and in general are proving to be very fine gentlemen indeed.

My best example of this is that we realised that our wonderful lemon tree, she of at least 30 years hard work providing vitamin C and delight to our home, had to be taken down.  She had, sadly, fruited one of her very best crops this summer and we were all loathe to do it.  But time is not on our side and the expense and disruption of working around one tree was too difficult, and down she had to come. But BEFORE she was cut, the builders picked every lemon on her and saved them for me (in the bassinet!) so we can distribute them to friends (and anyone who wants 5kg of lemons and hasn't realised it yet).  GENTLEMEN, I tell you.

We will have a ceremonial new planting of a lemon tree when we are resident.  I think it should be the first act of recovering the garden.  I am looking forward to it immensely.  I miss gardening very much, as much for the foolish and naughty cat-based activity as much as anything. Recently St Alice of the Garden helped me move and rescue many of my pots so that all the empty ones are safe from droppages and the rest are ready to come and live in our teeny courtyard and be (over) nurtured by me for the rest of the winter. Nurturing is such a strong imperative..

Our pusscat has gone to live with her grandparents* and is living up to her reputation for being strong-minded, feisty, very very insistent, and occasionally quite rewarding.  Early activity included spending 16 hours a day under the bed, followed by (of course it was during the middle of the night!) extreme sports in the form of opening every cupboard, scrabbling at every door and window, jumping where cats don't go, and my favourite, getting into the corner cupboard and riding the lazy susan flinging cake tins off as she went.  This at 3am didn't endear her to my father but my mother just goes 'awww..'. When she pleases, she is accepting pats and sitting on laps, and apart from ripping my mother's thumb off (an ill-advised attempt by ma at soothing a fwighted puss) she's keeping her 'Winning the Crusades One Claw at a Time' side to herself.

I am still here.  Yesterday a perfume sale said "Two orange dot specials for $40".  What was I to do?  Succumb, of course. I picked up these: Hugo Boss 'XX' which is slightly musky and very spicy, and Guess 'Seduction' which is slightly sweetly spicy-warm.. it's so impossible to describe scent.  I die laughing at the descriptions of wine flavours for the same reason - I've seen 'grape-y' (I should hope so); 'hints of earthy chocolate and burnt leaves' (mm, tasty), and 'evokes a sense of limpid summer'.  It does?? Does that mean it's long, humid and sunny?

But I digress.  My M is running on a High Distinction (81%) average for his first semester.  All those dire predictions of mere Passes are of course just nerves talking.  I was allowed to proof-read his final assessment piece and apart from the bits I didn't understand (about 90%) it seemed like a very good piece of work to me.  And I'm right!  His course has changed a little during his absence, so he's thought about upgrading it to a Masters. He was very chuffed to receive an offer to do just this, a couple of weeks ago, and he's accepted.  I'm not sure how many more semesters/subjects this means, but I'm delighted he feels he can achieve this. Of course he can!

I am busy (trying to) choose tiles and taps and benchtops and floors and a vacuum cleaner and windows and sarking (something to do with the roof which is incredibly expensive) and .. such.  I am( almost) amused that tile salesmen can say in the same breath 'oh I LOVE this job, people come in and choose such interesting things' and 'but we don't HAVE coral red and teal'.  I do like contrasts.  I could easily fill a house with amazing colours that bounce and clash and catch the eye and generate energy and warmth and calm and comfort and humour.  I can't see why not!  But the trend (I assume it's a trend) is for tiles to be stuck onto boards in a 'colour story' which is bugging me because a) you can't move the tiles (and therefore try different things), and b) it's someone's idea of a theme which is fine if you like it exactly as is.  Naturally I don't.  I should hastily add that many of the 'stories' are very beautiful, especially the natural stone and terracotta samples.  It's just that I want to use a neutral background and add a bit of 'wow' with my colours, and people keep telling me I can't.  I will, though.

I might stick some photos up of colour ideas in the next post.  It always helps to hear what others think.  Meantime, off I go to save our world again.  Hope you are all warm, well and achieving your wishes, one Wendy at a time..

Slowly gathering material....

Hello! And Happy Thing Celebration to you all. I hope your festive event has been more fun than stress; more bling than blah; and certainly more food than you ever thought you needed! My day with friends and family yesterday set what I believe to be a purrsonal calorie high. Mind you, temptation was thrown before me in lavish quantities - just the dessert portion of the meal went like this:

1. A very fine brandy and macadamia christmas pudding

2. An equally fine blueberry trifle, and

3. A massively rich chocolate mousse

... served with...

4. Whipped cream

5. Double cream

6. Pouring cream

7. Brandy butter

8. Superior vanilla icecream, and

9. Custard

I'm sure there's a number 10 in there somewhere I've forgotten (even tho my eyes were indeed bigger than my stomach, an amazing feat of re-arranged physiology not to be thought about too carefully...).

I feel very spoilt and cherished by friends, family, gifts, unexpected good wishes, lots of contact from people I haven't kept up with propurrly, and not least of all, the weather. We've had some very hot, windy, dry dusty smoky horrible weather recently. Christmas Eve was everything one could actively hate - hot, dry, the house stuffy from days of heat, and the stove on for hours. Even with the portable cooler I was a hot hot purrson all day. And then, overnight, a cool change blew through, bringing with it steady, delicious, freshening rain. Maybe it spoiled a few picnics and barbecues, but I was delighted. I AM delighted! It's still cool and rainy, and long may it last. There's plenty of summer left to be hot and sweaty.

The gardens look so green, so invigorated, so wonderfully fresh. The mulch looks dark with water and usefully heavy with purpose, keeping roots and soil damp and cool. The day lilies are drooping with water and the roses and just .. fabulous. FABULOUS!

We have a few days before leaving for the coast, to read our christmas books, eat our christmas goodies, arrange our gorgeous new christmas fruity bits, drink our christmas bottles, and enjoy our christmas bling. I'm so delighted with my new resin necklace (thank you, darling M) that I've been wearing it in bed while I read. It's made of different lozenge shapes in reds, oranges and yellows, and is very me. For which read colourful, informal and a bit funky.

The last few days brought to you by sore feet (cooking requires much standing); several hard-used aprons; and a series of favourite purrfumes: Prada, the end of the bottle of Gucci, one evening's worth of Thierry Mugler's 'Angel', and quantities of Jo Malone 'Vintage Gardenia'. I urge you to try the Gardenia; it's delightfully balanced and flowery without being heavy or cloying. It goes very well, for example, with a chocolate mousse and shot of bourbon supper!

:-(

I am not a happy camper.

This makes it harder to write, unless you care for more comparative lists of my attempts to first vent and then attempt counting blessings.

This week? - I'm only putting blessings in, cos I'm sick of feeling whingy.

So...

There's been a LOT of culture - saw 'The Reader' on Saturday, a most compelling and somewhat upsetting film. Saw Teddy Tahu Rhodes and David Hobson perform on Tuesday night, a very most wonderful concert. Quite the thing for making all of us wiggle a little in out seats! Bought the CD, got it signed by both of them, very fabbo. Tonight went to see a satirical performance of '39 Steps'. Very clever, lots of slapstick, very funny. Noisy. We will all be speaking in fake-o German, British, RRRRussian and Scorts accents for weeks.

In between, M took me to Manuka to help me get over a fit of the blues. He achieved this most adeptly by first plonking me in Ironbark, a cafe which specialises in Aussie tucker (and very good coffee); and joining in a visit to Paperchain bookshop before AND after the meal. I gots lovely bookies. I shall list them in a minute. He didn't hold back either. It was good. Easy, shameless spending. We rounded out the day by stopping at the Electric Shadows Bookshop where I found several dvds and a really wonderful card which shows a woman breaking through a barrier labelled 'Self-Doubt'. It says

SHE LET GO,
FORGING A HOLE THROUGH THE AIR,
AS SHE SCREAMED PAST HER LIMITATIONS.

Yeah.

I've had the deep pleasure of walking back and forth on my new circle path. I've noticed the carnations are STILL flowering, and that I can now enjoy their scent.

I spent a most wonderful two hours with Ness, who inspired (ordered, bossed and bullied) me into digging out bits of upholstery fabric to make two big boofy cushions. AND she fed me home-made bread with good cheese. She is A Goodie.

Today lunch with sis involved the bacon-iest BLT yet, and a gentle garden-viewing (of my place). She's an excellent gardener, and has helped me sort out a lot of garden puzzles with her wisdom and encouragement. She was very impressed with my quince crop - ONE purrfect fruit! Then St Beth arrived for a 'crafty', wherein she sat on the new couch, admiring Maccy as he slept, snored, rolled, squikked and wuffled next to her. She knitted very neat white baby things while I excavated every box, bag, drawer, pile, drawer and bundle of textiles in the room. We threw things onto the floor for inspiration. We stroked silks and unrolled braids and bindings and rattled little tubes of glass beads. We averted our gaze as I 'accidentally' dropped an unwanted knit square firmly in the bin. I enjoyed removing lots of little bits of dead daddy-long-leg legs. Wendy slept on the mat outside the deck door, keeping close to marmy as she does. I felt a mixture of embarressment at the amount of stuff I have, and some energy about how to get started again. We ate dates and apricots and it was GOOD.

Now my M says "if we sleep now we'll get 9 hours before we have to wake up" and that is another thing to be pleased about. So I shall stop packing my fukken pill containers, hunting for scripts to get re-filled, heat up the milk I want to put my bourbon into, and find a cat to squish me into one corner of the bed.

Tomorrow, you know, I might just go nuts. It could be MUCH easier. Today brought to you by fairly large amounts of Jo Malone "Parma Violet" Linen Spray, and also her "Dark Amber and Wild Ginger" Cologne. Both of them luscious. Next? I needs a dorter. Dorter???? I'm-a comin!

View from the weekend..

Bumpy. Undulating? Definitely not smooth, anyway.

A friend had a bad fall and broke his hip; instant mayhem for the family. I hope he'll heal fast, completely and with added wisdom. Nasty events always have this potential!

My darling M has been very down today, after spending yesterday being wonderfully energetic and keeping ME going. He woke in the night saying he was feeling his age. Poor man. We decided that this meant today was an Official Sunday, thereby throwing all expectations to the winds and letting ourselves blob around, eat funny things at funny times, indulge each other, and play with the cats. The highlight of the day was watching a dvd of Claudio Abbado conducting the Berlin Phil in a lavishly gorgeous theatre in Sorrento. A wonderful purrformance of Dvorak's 'New World Symphony', with some rather pretentious doco-style ramblings about supposed influences on his composition. But the purrformance was masterful, and very well filmed. We enjoyed it very much, as we quietly removed a few more bits of fur-lump from Maccy, snorted our evening drinks down with posh chocolate, and tried very hard to get Wendy to come in from a storm. She turned up well after it was over, looking very pleased with herself. And very wet!

We've reconstructed my workroom as a spare bedroom (ie put a bed in there again), and M is now sacked out, safely tucked in away from my nocturnal/insomniac interruptions. I'm happily up the other end of the house (there's a lot to be said for long, rectangular houses), playing the Corrs, typing, arranging my 'art' teatowels on the bed (I can feel some hanging up coming on tomorrow), contemplating the Ikea delivery next weekend, thinking of sofa-hunting tomorrow, and considering the effect of a cheese sandwich before sleepytime. Trouble is, I want a cheese sandwich with LOTS of butter, and I'm sure my doc would shudder and point to my latest cholesterol level results. Dang.

I haven't made much of a start on this year yet, except to throw out the prescriptions from 2007 which are definitively out of date. I'm not trying for a resolution, cos I aint got any. Even moderate attempts at willpower are largely a failure. Going with the flow is easier, except I don't flow much, I'm more of a stasis girl. Oh well. There are some fun projects I could start on, easily completed, which would be satisfying. Like putting a hanging pocket on a sequinned and embroidered cloth, to hang behind our bed. Finishing putting polar fleece along the edge of our bedspread so the fringe doesn't tickle our noses. Sewing ditto to mum's HYOOG knitted blanky which is going to Germany to adorn the bed of my eldest niece. This one will have to be handsewn, and with temperatures aiming for 37 later this week, I'm not looking forward to having it in my lap! I might have to do a deal with the ironing board.. it can take the bulk and the weight, while I fiddle with the edge. We'll see. It might be one of those things which is massively attractive to the attentions of a cat. A cat which might think it's great fun to 'help'.

.... I should get my wobbly ass back to gym. And off to the pool for wading, which, dear readers, is THE exercise invented to fix your tight lower back. Goes like this: hop into the medium pool at Dickson, the one which is only 1.5m at the deepest end, is under shade-cloth, and is big enough to stride around. Stride around. Do this until you feel like a coffee. Go and get one - they're rather good at the cafe there - and resume striding around with your coffee in one hand. Fabbo. You can do all this without getting your hair wet, your self sunburnt, or endangering your caffeine level. Close to purrfect as a form of exercise don't you think?

Alice the Garden came today (delayed from last Tuesday when it was too hot). She does miracles every time. Today she put in the three large iceberg roses I was given before christmas. I've been keeping them alive in plastic bags... I hope they'll all thrive. We're happily planting prickly things all along part of our front fence, because late last year someone walking along there broke off most of my fruit tree saplings. Much grief, especially for the persimmon tree which was leaping towards the sun and looking very happy. Now it's only 2 feet tall. A nice thick row of high and rambling roses; boysenberries, raspberries, spiky grevilleas and anything else I can think of to add to the deterrent mix; a year or so of growing, and my trees will be quite safe. AND I hope all this will outgrow the bloody vinca, which is big fat nuisance all along the fence-line. As bad as ivy.

Alice's visits always leave me with lots of things to do in her wake. I can't dig the holes or cart the heavy bags of stuff around. But I'm a gun Seasol-er; I can plant wee things into the softer soil; and I can plan, oh how I can plan! I have many natives to go in, and my sis busy growing more from seed, the clever thing. When all my hakeas finally fall over, I'll have Canberra grown and hardened replacements all strong and healthy. Nice. I'll also have a very eclectic garden full of cape daisies and mint bush and boobialla and blue fescue and lavender and agapanthus and pigface and geraniums and seaside daisy... I think there's only one environmental weed in that list! I'll check... I've spent 10 years removing masses of the top ten enviro-weeds which were all rampant in this old garden. The huge piles of privet, honeysuckle, ivy, cotoneaster, vinca, wandering jew, ... well that's 6 out of 10. I know I had ten but it's too late to look up details. Trust me!

And now I see it is tomorrow and that cheese sammo is looking better and better. I guess I could go easy on the butter and add a bit of mustard... I will certainly be adding purrfume to the nocturnal mix. I have some Mugler 'Angel' which needs opening. The one I've been using in the last week is 'Lily Angel', a difference I didn't note until I saw bottles on display in a very dangerous shop in Manuka... a shop full of shiny things and discounted purrfume and beads and makeup and and and.. what with being under the influence of pancakes, being very relaxed, and knowing what was in my bank account, I had no chance did I?

Please send bone-knitting, garden-growing, headache-dispelling and sense-of-smell-in-full-opurrational-order vibes. They will all go to good homes. Send some dorter-patting too while you're at it, pats are always useful on dorters. Especially darling ones like mine.

Maccy: the update.

Saint LIbby the vet says all his symptoms (agitation, extensive vocalising, weight loss, poor grooming) can be attributed to hyperthyroidism. We were investigating this in early December, but he was unwell in other ways so the treatment had to be delayed. Now he has nice thyroid tablets to take for a few weeks. Then we'll re-check his blood test to make sure other things are working properly, and then !!!! he may well be a very good candidate for radio-isotope treatment. This means a week in an isolation ward while he metabolises the bit which makes Geiger counters go berko. Heh. This treament cures 95% of cats permanently from thyroid disfunction. I find it kind of amusing to consider having a radio-active cat! He's had so many other dramatic things wrong with him, I'm sure this will just add an eery green glow to his 8th or 9th life.

As for the rest of me, I am slowly climbing out of my 'return-to-home' slump. I spent a couple of hours in the garden last night, clipping, pulling a few succulent weeds, tying things up again, watering and plotting. The plotting is the most abstract and the widest ranging activity. I'm delighted to see that almost nothing has suffered during our absence. I think several storms of rain did their bit to keep things looking very good. Mysteriously the four pumpkin plants have disappeared, but I suspect they were put in a place that Wendy considered to be sacred digging territory, so I'm NOT going to investigate! The artichokes have positively creaked upwards, the roses are getting ready to bloom again, all the veggie seedlings are about 8 times bigger, and the weeds in the 'cleared' areas are looking especially lush.

I enjoyed having enough heat in the day to deal with umpteen loads of sheets, towels and every knicker in the house. Hmm, sun-dried knickers, there might be something in that... I like having my dvd collection, and my proper cushion on the chair, not to mention the lovely purple velvet pillows on the bed. So sofffttt....

Resolution? I haven't had the heart to make any, but today a little thought kind of trickled through the layers of early morning fug, caffeine absorption and bleariness - maybe I could try a bit harder. That's it. I'm not going to spoil a good idea by confusing it with details, expectations or deadlines. We'll see.

Today brought to you by a very shiny laundry (after I had to completely take down, re-organise/prune/clean/de-tangle and tie up properly George and Georgette, the monsteras). Also a very shiny cat (Wendy, fopping all over the euphorbias), and a ruffled but patient Maccy. Also a few blasts of Angel, which I think I am going to be addicted to for a bit. Tomorrow is jam-making, sewing (with the aircon on for sure), and a proper dinner. Of..... proper food, proper cooking, and such. Watch this space!

Sorry!

I have been informed that my blog is not being updated frequently enough. Oops! I've been letting mere life get in the way... I'm very distracted by worries over my darling dorter's health, but frequent phone calls are keeping my maternal urges more or less under control. She's very patient with me! I keep thinking that as I'm the mother, I should be doing the supportive nurturing, but apparently it works both ways. She's a darling girl.

We've been enjoying the beginning of a major paving/landscaping project around the house - Mr Brown has been very busy with other jobs, but has finally found the time to start our much-anticipated 'circles' design. We have a rectangular house on a long rectangular block, with a very square back yard and a very right-angle L-shaped front yard. Our plan is to introduce as many curves, arches and circles/half-circles as possible, to soften the look and make the garden more organic - if that's not a contradiction in terms. We have some pathways already in place, curved and looping around the L-shape. Now we are adding a wide, curving path from street to front door, replacing a narrow line of old concrete. Mr Brown himself said it would be much better Feng Shui! And I found, at Amber Tiles, a wonderful 'mat' of pale grey cobblestones, arranged in a mosaic circle, within a square. We'll cut the circles out and put one between the front gate and the steps to the front door (only a few metres, so a circle should help offset the fact that there isn't enough room to make a curving pathway without making it stupidly too winding for anyone to follow); the other circle will go in the centre of a much larger paved circle in the back yard, which will be the only flat area there. No lawn! Just paving, pathways and garden beds. And trees, and roses, and ginormous artichokes, and masses of seaside daisy...

We'll end up with two distinct areas - a cottage garden with fruit and veggies mixed in, at the back of the house; and a much drier native garden in the front. This garden includes a copse of fruit trees in the sunniest corner, and a whole wall of climbing roses outside those windows - they are quite close to the road so we're using thorny plantings against the house to discourage burgulers. Eventually the beds will be filled with native ground covers and probably some more herbs - I like using rosemary, thyme and perhaps even some curly kale to fill in little flat spots. I want all the garden to be rich with scents, for those days when I can smell things!

Earlier in the year my father drilled into the mortar above the cup-of-tea seat, to hang a wrought-iron mandala - yes, another circle. This will eventually be the centrepiece of a wall covered in ficus. I feel it should also include two more smaller decorative pieces. The hunt is on for things I 'feel' are right there.. a small trickling water feature will have pride of place next to the seat, so a happy person can sit there under the gum and the mandala/s, listening to the soothing trickle of water and drinking tea, whilst watching a bad cat run up the gum tree and try to catch a currawong. What more could you ask for suburban bliss?

Next post I'll rave on about the nature strip plantings and my plan to begin attacking my patchwork pile of possibilities. It's all about blocks of colour you know.

Today brought to you by analgesia, coffee, and a long cuddle with Maccy. I can't smell anything today. I guess this doesn't stop me from spraying a big squirt of something on, does it? Hm.... I think ... I feel like....Prada, cos it's spicy and warm and that is a good thing to smell AND to feel!

The Week That Was...

... was busy.  An understatement.

... was full of many small but important achievements - fittings for walking shoes; anti-blister socks; after 3 tries, managing to get to the tailor with the right fabrics AND the right trousers to be copied (and suffer the brutal honesty of measurements); further consultations with the travel agent; a loooooooong consultation with the doc to get a three-month supply of the eleventy meds I need to keep body and soul together on a daily basis; physio; M to the dentist (it's my turn for that tomorrow); cleaners; path-making/paving person initial consultation (doesn't EVERYone decide to re-pave and beautify their entire garden 13 days before leaving on a three-month trip??); some craft-work; some cooking; cat-walking; two visits to the gym, and more.... (creak, pant, whimper..) ... lunch with sainted parents (and yes I managed to forget to bring their present.  Mum, otoh, presented me with some amazingly dubious summer pedal-pushers, white with large hot pink blobs, I think I'll frighten the horses in those - what on earth was she channelling when she bought them I wonder??? ... purrhaps best not to know, if my mother has suddenly developed a penchant for disco-daks I think I'd rather not know).

... was icy cold after the beauty of a week in Cairns.

... was strangely bereft of purrfume, especially over the last two days.  But I have a cold or purrhaps a small throat lurgy, so my sense of smell is gone again.  It's ephemeral at best, dammit.  I do recall trying Dolce and Gabbana "Ice Blue" on Friday and wondering if in fact it has any smell.  Didn't put two and two together and get' dodgy nose attack imminent'.  All these years and I am still naive about it.  That is either wonderful, or kinda sad...

... required me to fall into a large heap as of last night and have an uber-sleep followed by a Sunday afternoon of lolling about with newspapers, cups of coffee, phone calls to friends, a spot of Netting (check my blog list for a wonderfully-named new craft site), and a firm decision to stay inside.  Checking the breeze at the front door was enough to make that decision very easy. M got to be the Mr. Goody-FourPaws and take Maccy for his walk.  Maccy wasn't very obliging, he sauntered over to say howdy to the neighbours, did a bit of desultory tree-scratching, and then firmly sat down on the job and had to be carried home.  Hopeless.  Otoh on Saturday we managed to go all around the block, with him purring (and dwibbling) all the way, awwwww.. 

I have applied some 'Enjoy' to get me through the night.  This, combined with a nearly maximum quantity of pain-relievers, should do the trick.  Any kind of stress on my respiratory system, especially a virus, means almost instant umpty-fold pain in the left sinus.  That poxy left sinus which demands so much attention and which refuses to lie down and be quiet, even thougt the professorial uber-doc has pronounced it 'patent and healthy'.  Hear that, oh troublesome one??

Nup.

Am wafting off to the bedroom raspberry wall leaning against which are the purple, sage green and cerise pillows.  Pillows lying about on the sage and maroon covers keeping a slumbering M warm, and providing colour-contrast for one fuzz-buzz black scruff-bucket.  Enjoy, I say.  Enjoy, I smell.  

Sort of.

Going Public!

Well!  Cath (The Canberra Cook blogspot) has published a link to here so I spose I'm outed now.  Better try to be more like me then.  Btw if you enjoy reading the adventures of a cyber-hooked catlovin' cookaholic, DO visit her site.  Much more purrfessional than mine is (yet).

And speaking of her site, today she sent a link to some amusing knitting sites - I have seen a live knitted dalek - our friend Ness made one in white with black blobs for her son Aidan.  The eyes and guns are kinda floppy, and the gun, knitted in white, looked suspiciously like a tampon before she sewed it on.  Most amusing.  I'm sure Aidan will have many years of fun bwastin' baddies wid it.

As for me, I have done nothing towards gwowing up today.  I visited my friend Toni who is suffering badly from a chronic pain condition.  We get together regularly to say fark to each other and provide other critical means of friendly support, like custard danishes, coffee and laughing through the tears... 

On the way home I did some scavenging.  I have developed a fondness for old wire screen doors - the rather ornamental designs.  I take the wire off, turn them around and hang them on my fence.  Then I grow things like clematis and roses and jasmine up through them to be pretty.  Today I added to my haul by one fly screen, one old wooden-framed door with very nice frosted glass, in the old style.  Our house has quite a lot of old frosted glass in it, so I'm keeping this one in case we break a pane or walk through a door or something.  

My fave scavenge item is a beautiful old fire grate.  When I learn how, I'll post a photo of it.  It's a lovely curved design, and I will have to decide if it will go in the fireplace or live outside being more garden ornamentation.  Always a struggle to decide things like this.  I don't really aspire to a garden full of quirky found objects, except I do.  It's just that I want them to look lovely, not hopelessly kitsch, and I don't know if I am arty enough to make it work the right way.  Meantime, loot is good!

And the perfume of the day is "Enjoy" by Patou.  A softer (and far cheaper, it must be said) version of the famous perfume "Joy".

Data days...

Today?  Back to back appointments for the care and control of the careful but uncontrollable body.  Dentist for hours, having part one of a crown (who knew one could achieve principalities just by lying back and going OW?).  Nice dentist, very fetching yellow chair.  Everything else less entertaining, although at one point Stuart said "are you ok?" and I said "yes of course, I'm just singing songs in my head, but your drill is out of tune...".

The physio said "Have I told you about the tennis-ball-into-the-butt exercise?"  How to answer THAT?  I said no, but she forgot to demonstrate before I left.  I am perhaps not so sad about this!

Now I am ringing up unsatisfactory home-assistance services, like T#lstra, the cleaners, the garden dudes, who have all PROmised they'll ring, and PROmised they'll turn up, etc etc.  Fibbers and skivers the lot of them.  I managed to extract times and dates from the cleaners.  Purrhaps they felt sorry for me after I mentioned that we have switched from sweeping to raking in the kitchen... 

The garden dudes should return soon to continue to remove archaeological layers of mulch in the gutters and rain it down on my unsuspecting garden beds.  I see this as quite a positive thing - apart from stopping water backing up under the eaves and frying our outside lights, this will be their extra added nutrient for the next six months.

And now, just to top myself off, so to speak, it's time to visit the counsellor for my regular vent, moan, whimper, snort and snuffle.  I haven't had time to have lunch, wash my hair, hang out the clothes, or anyfink.  I want to say fark this and sit in front of a fire, knitting bobbles.  I only learnt how to do that yesterday so it's a funky fun subject right now.

Oh well.  Life does go ON, doesn't it?...