Head in the Clouds – Feet in the Dirt

Hello! This was my late lunch. Hot chocolate, cheese, bikkies with a dollop of sweet chilli sauce on top!
It was a fiddly kind of day. The weather wasn’t much – not inspiring to work outside. But I did have to go into town and fix up several bank-like tasks – depositing car money, ordering US dollars, cancelling car insurance, dropping off the car disposal notice… blah blah… shopping… That kind of thing.
I discovered something about myself today – why every now and again I get totally titchy about running a house/yard etc. Its the little things. Not hard jobs, just seemingly mountains of five minute jobs that have to be attended to that stops me from spending all day or even half a day being able to concentrate on a single project.
They are just so pesty to my mind! Some I enjoy, some not so much, but all of them are small tasks that pull you from here to there and by the end of the day it really doesn’t look like you have done much at all! Does anyone else get that or does no-one actually have any idea what I am rabbiting on about?? haha

One of my unfinished projects – compiling a little housekeeping book with recipes and budget ideas for the Texan Bride to Be.
I finally spent a couple of hours yesterday making a start on it – and grabbed a few more minutes today to add a couple more recipes.

I guess its all the other jobs that seem to eat my day away run along the lines of – Washing up, water the hothouse, feed & water the chickens, put the bread on, clean the kitty litter, empty the compost, find scraps and return to chickens, washing up, top up firewood, put shopping away, and a heap of other non-noteworthy five minute tasks that never seem to end!
It doesn’t help I am NOT naturally organised and tidy – but I would rather get my teeth into one big all-day project than all these (essential) small tasks.  (Really – how do people with CHILDREN survive????) 🙂
Oh well… its a first-world problem isn’t it? I need to work on more strategies to keep the house and those tasks under control rather than stringing them out all through the day with no time left to work on the fun stuff.

I did gather some change that was floating about the house to donate to Connie’s Big Heart Project Love Your Sister is an amazing family who are throwing themselves into raising money for cancer research. Cancer seems to effect all of us in some way or another – no family seems immune these days.

Hopefully tomorrow I will get to spend a little time in my much neglected garden – just have to wait and see what the weather decides!

Cheers

 

 

We said goodbye to our car today. The young couple and their girls turned up this morning to complete the transaction and take the vehicle with them.
What a surprise when the oldest of their girls (Miss 3) presented us with this box of farm fresh produce!!!
Lamb chops, pork, mince and two dozen quail eggs!!!

And the coolest part was the awesome decorations by the girls – Heidi was responsible for creating the big flower, the dinosaur (I had to check with the artist to see if it was a giraffe or dinosaur) and the very appropriate car. Frieda, her little sister, did the smaller flower! (They were too adorable!!)

I am already googling what to do with quail eggs! They are so cute!

It was a really really lovely thing to do – very unexpected. And here I was thinking car related transactions were boring!!

Hope your day had something amazingly positive too!

Cheers!

Another day and the camera had no work to do! Just posting a few images from my birthday hike that were taken along the Twisted Lakes Track (great name huh?)

Well… two major ticks off my list today.
First up, we accidentally sold the car!!
Seriously – we were going to sell it, but delayed when we did the Overland Track as it was so much cheaper and more convenient to car shuttle while we had the two cars to get us to the start of the hike and back home again from the end.

Then, with one thing and another, we just didn’t get back onto cleaning it back up and advertising it.

Yesterday a friend called me and said her friends car was cactus and repairing was not worth the cost and needed something new.
Fabulous. So a lady called and arranged to come and see it this morning. I got up early to wash and vacuum it – haha – it’d gotten a bit shabby with all the driving lately.

Nice couple. They asked to take it to a local mechanic for a check over, so we said sure – here are the keys, see you later. (So funny – in the country where people know people you tend to trust a lot more)

They got back and I said they could think about it as we hadn’t got our act together to advertise it so they didn’t have to make hasty decisions. They kinda looked at each other and said they wanted to talk price and paperwork!! Decision made apparently!!

So relieved to have that off my mind. Just one less thing and we owed my parents  what the couple are paying us for the car, as my lovely folk helped us out to get the new car, as we really have overstretched ourselves a ‘little’ this year!
Oh well… we are normally less extravagant but sometimes you just got to get out there and do stuff as the opportunity arises!

So – the second tick was to actually get a flight out of Tasmania to Melbourne so I can catch my flight to the USA!! (Fairly important I suppose!!!)
So thats done. Because my international flight is early morning, I need to get the the mainland the day before. Still debating about sitting at the airport all night with my luggage or get a hotel room. I am leaning towards the saving money side and convincing myself I have oodles of time to sleep on the plane! haha. Budget, people Budget!!!!! 😀

OK – time for bed. I have to get up absurdly early tomorrow (note -anything before 9am is what I class as early) as cousins are picking us up and we are all doing a hike up at Cradle (you know – just for something different)
Actually the hike will be about 2/3 a different track
Its also supposed to rain and the warmest it will get is about 11C (51F)
I have a lot of warm things packed and a separate bag with dry clothes to change into – learning my lesson from the last hike!

Cheers!!

Hello!
My biggest achievement today was not messing up the parts of the house I cleaned yesterday!!
I did have a three hour long cuppa & catch up with a friend that was overdue, so that was pretty nice and relaxing!
Chilly tonight!
Hope your week is going along swimmingly!

Cheers!

The highway out the front was uncharacteristically quiet today.
Unfortunately two trucks came to grief only a paddock’s distance away from our place!

Both drivers happily survived, although one man was reported to be in a critical condition in hospital.
It took them a fair while to get him out of his truck.
But the highway was completely blocked for over 7 hours today!

So it was actually rather lovely and peaceful at Norwich House today – just glad that (so far) no-one paid with their life for it.
The main damaged truck was full of potatoes that were spread all over the highway! (I saw from media’s photos)
I really don’t think our little highway is built for the volume of traffic it gets and the speed limits it has. There are few options for diversion for the big trucks, a lot of which had to sit on the highway all day waiting for it to be cleared. Other routes aren’t very suitable for high volumes of trucks using them – but today there was little choice.

I woke up with a fair amount of aching body-parts.
I couldn’t leave the property due to the accident (well… I would have had trouble returning) so I lazed about at home.
Found some celery and pulled up a couple of carrots – added them to some other things and slow cooked a beef soup/stew. Was pretty tasty and there is plenty leftover for tomorrow night!

Hope your weeks starts well!

Cheers!

Every bit of me is tired tonight!
After I made Jeff walk the boring beach (haha – sure he enjoyed but no mountains to slog up) he really wanted to do a ‘real’ walk… so we went back to Roland to climb the other side.

We went up the track we avoided last time (you know, because it kinda went straight up)
Oh. My. Giddy. Aunt!!
I cannot seem to capture how steep this track was… and it went on and on.
And on.
And when we got to a cross path Jeff insisted that it was going to now level out.
We got this:

I think it was another hour of still going up but with the added bonus of rocks/boulders to haul my backside up and over.
Can I add it was really wet weather too?? And foggy.

So we were going to do all this and fail to get rewarded with a view!
Did I mention it was wet?

I couldn’t have been wetter if I had jumped in a river!

Eventually I fell into a mud puddle and got Hangry (It was past 2pm and we hadn’t stopped for lunch)
I used up my quota of creative swear words but I would have to say it was a mongrel of a climb. When we return to Roland, I know I won’t be taking that path up!! (On the up side, I am pretty sure my bottom is a LOT skinnier today!!)

Everything is spooky and cool in the mist though, so it was pretty – even with limited visibility.

The mountain that you can’t actually see that we were climbing was Mt Van Dyke. Its alongside Mt Roland.

We had a small water crossing…

We finally reached the crossroad part where we were last week, where we could sit and eat – and then blissfully go DOWN!

I could better appreciate how beautiful the mist made the scenery look!

Well… I am off to face-plant my bed.
If you don’t see me here tomorrow its because I didn’t bother moving for 24 hours! (that or I COULDN’T move for 24 hours)

Cheers!