But what do I do all day!

I'm constantly being asked what I do all day after having such a busy job and mostly I answer "nothing much" or "just cruising". Despite this I seem to find it very easy to fill my days, it's just that no one is watching me and my deadlines now are, for the most part, pretty elastic.
I have to admit that after so many years on the treadmill, I still feel absurdly guilty about not still being there, but not enough to fret about the fact that a full-time gig appears to have become a distant memory.
So, what do I do? Well, I'm always cooking and have even taken up baking the occasional sweet thingy for Gorgeous George to have for his play lunch at work. Bread is a work in progress but one day I am sure a loaf I can be proud of will pop out of the oven. I have also become a regular Heidi and some weeks I make yoghurt and ricotta. The only thing I'm not doing is the yodelling, but there is plenty of time for that.
I keep Fred the talking Tonk company most days, not an easy job and requiring a great deal of responding to catty complaints and moaning. I let Bertie the dog in and out of the house so he can woof when someone pushes a pram past the house and I let Boo, the feral charity cat, in and out so he won't shred the timber doors, although this has had limited success as the once pristine cedar now looks rather more like desiccated coconut. Just looking at the mess he has made is enough to turn Gorgeous George into a purple-faced spluttering wreck.
I have taken up craft in a big way, including making Tim the Toolman some stubby cosies so his little hands don't get cold in winter when he drinks a beer and started making my own clothes again. Some of my other projects, for instance the flower pom pom made out of recycled tissue paper, have been less successful but I enjoy doing them anyway. I throw paint around, either at a canvas (I like to paint flowers) or the latest piece of furniture undergoing a makeover, and considering there are only two of us I spend a ridiculous amount of time washing and ironing clothes.
I walk most days and have come to know the regulars, for instance the Korean couple who walk every morning and hold each other's hands the whole way, the little Italian man whose Jack Russell cross is ever hopeful of bagging one of the bunnies that live near the station, the lollypop man Gerry who runs the crossing for the local preschool, the tiny little lady who owns the enormous airedale and has occasionally been sighted walking him on a Friday afternoon with a glass of wine in her hand, and Ralf, the goat who lives down the other end of our street - Ralf comes with an owner and a small yappy dog.
I garden passionately and grow vegies with variable levels of success and take enormous pride in the alcanteria bromeliad and gingers that are thriving in an area not known for its tropical plants. There are even some little frogs living in the bromeliad, which pleases me a lot. I have found a little tree snake in the kitchen (deposited there by a helpful cat) and the blue tongue lizard that lives under the front veranda knows me well. We understand each other and I often fill a water bowl out there in case he/she needs a drink.
And now I am off to try making lamingtons. There will be coconut and chocolate everywhere.

Hurricane Hector

Hurricane Hector came to visit last weekend, although this time he dragged along the Boho Babe  and Tim the Toolman as well. A fine time was had by all except for Gorgeous George who managed to behave as though he was six years old and had lost his favourite teddy. As usual much huffing and puffing and hand flapping, all of which Heck finds highly entertaining.

Hector was a busy boy. He took me and the Babe for a brisk 5km walk each morning at sparrow fart, followed by several hours of barking at the back door because Gorgeous wouldn't let him in because Fred, one of the cats, was too highly strung to cope. In actual fact Fred is a terrorist who has the determination of an ox and specialises in making everyone else's nerves frazzled.

In between barking and jumping up on GG - Hector is convinced GG is joking when he says he doesn't like dogs - Hector enticed Bertie, my little old white fluffy dog who has very little sense of humour, into several rowdy games of trying to steal Heck's pig trotter. He also dug an enormous hole half way to China in a garden bed Gorgeous George is particularly proud of, helped me in the kitchen by removing a smoked trout from the bench and attempting to swallow it whole, dug all the pebbles out of the water feature, went swimming in the pets' water bowl on the veranda (it is the size of your average mixing bowl), bayed like the Hound of the Baskervilles when the possum with the bad attitude that lives in our roof decided to stomp out for an evening's entertainment, spent a great deal of time standing with his paws on the kitchen bench deciding which of the dishes he would sample next and dropping his ball in front Bertie in the hope that he would throw it for him, despite the fact that Bertie thinks fetching balls is a terrible waste of time, let alone trying to throw them away again.

At the end of a busy weekend, he chillaxed on the couch - which Gorgeous insists he is not allowed to do because "he is a dog, derr" - with his ball, catching some zzzzzzs ready for another busy week of being a terrorist. Gorgeous George is still in therapy and Bertie has buried the pigs' trotters for a rainy day. I am about to start repairing the garden and filling in the holes. It's good, honest work.

 

 

The truth about stuff

The truth is out. I. Love. Stuff. Gorgeous George does not love stuff. he discourages my fondness for it at every turn.
And, of course, I come from a  long line of hoarders who left me their stashes when they parted company with planet earth. And sad as I was to lose people I loved dearly, I was even sadder to be saddled with carloads full of stuff that had a whole pile of sentiment thrown in on top. To just turf the lot or hand it over to charity seemed like a terrible way to treat my Grandma's stuff. So I kept it.
For many years we had a large house and a reasonably large income, so it didn't matter too much. There was always a mantle piece or bay window where they could be artfully displayed, or at least I like to think they were artfully displayed. But then Gorgeous George and I made one of those life decisions that meant we had to sell our large house and move into a much smaller one - without much in the way of space or storage for people, let alone stuff. Suddenly there was no room for my 1000s of books, patterned china, quaint leadlight cabinets, pot plants, paintings, kitchen appliances and all the rest.
It had to go. So we sold what we could and threw out some more. I reckon we disposed of about 40 per cent of our possessions at the time.
And still we had too much stuff. We couldn't fit our specially designed timber wardrobe in the door, so it sat on the front porch for a few weeks till a friend helped Gorgeous George take it to pieces and reassemble it inside. The tiny dining room and covered back veranda were both packed to the roof with boxes full of stuff for at least a year. Everywhere I looked, there were boxes and boxes of it. During that time stuff went mouldy, stuff was thrown out in council clean-ups, some was gifted to the Babe when she moved out, more stuff was sold on ebay. Along the way we installed a little more storage, mostly in the form of a kitchen with cupboards, at which time I realised much of my kitchen stuff would also need to be relocated to someone else's home or the tip. At least another 30 per cent of our stuff has been disposed of since moving here.
And occasionally, late at night when Gorgeous George and the animals are snoring the sleep of the just and pure, I lie on the couch and fret about the money, time and emotional energy this stuff has cost me. And I promise myself I will never fall into a trap full of stuff again.
I still sometimes have the urge to head out and buy stuff - which is why we have an orange side table that the GG hates and an orange chair that he quite likes - but mostly I resist. I will never, despite my constant dreaming, become a sleek minimalist, but there is nothing like a change of fortune and living in a tiny house to remind you of what is important and what you can and can't live without. What is important is the people you love. Stuff doesn't even get a look in.
So should the Babe and the Geek ever get around to reading this blog, here's a message from your ma. When the GG and I are no more and if there is actually anything left that we haven't thrown out, sold or given away, never, ever feel obliged to hang on to any of our stuff because it was just our stuff. If you love it and enjoy it, fine, if not kick it to the curb.
Then go and spend some time with the people you care about.

A criminal mastermind

The problem with owning indoor cats is that they spend a great deal of their time trying to be outdoor cats. We have indoor cats for a couple of reasons, mostly involving their tendency to get themselves prematurely dead. Or, in the case of Dradis, expensively and painfully injured. Dradis is, in fact, not our cat but the Babe's. When she moved out she left him behind because "it would be cruel to separate him and Fred". Fred is our other indoor cat, a talking Tonk, and frankly, a nightmare.
While we were renovating, Dradis managed to escape on the back of a ute. For some reason Dradis loves utes and likes to lie on the tarp section at the back, hence his unexpected trip when the plasterer failed to notice he had a cat ornament. Somewhere on a busy road close to us, Dradis decided he was  no longer a fan of utes and jumped off into six lanes of traffic. One shattered pelvis and broken leg and three months hiding later, he re-emerged weighing 2.5kg to undergo unusual surgery that cost the family $thousands and thus became an indoor cat. Since them, he's been trying to escape.
Last night he managed and we have no idea how. Neither did his best buddy Fred who was snoring happily in bed with Gorgeous George and my lovely self. Upon waking from a wonderful night's sleep I realised something was wrong, terribly wrong, namely that I had enjoyed a wonderful night's sleep. Usually I toss and turn with Dradis's furry noggin next to mine on the pillow. Any attempt to escape is met with feline contempt as he merely rearranges himself in some new and incredibly uncomfortable position on my pillow, preferably with his head tucked under my chin. Last night only Fred had me pinned down.
After leaping out of bed several hours early and rushing around the neighbourhood in my PJs, I discovered him pottering in the front yard next door. Courtesy of his accident he is very slow and easy to catch, so he was soon back inside. And it was time for his breakfast, the highlight of his day, so he considered it a reasonable compromise. I still haven't figured out how he got out, but my money is on Bertie. I reckon Dradis paid him to open the door and let him out. Or maybe it was the possum living in our roof that has us all terrified. Perhaps we will never know. I think the answer is surveillance cameras. If I pop my gold coins in the change jar for 20 years or so I should be able to afford it.

These lilies are tigers

Most of our friends like to travel and eat at nice restaurants. Gorgeous George and I renovate crappy old houses. I don't think we ever set out to do that and it certainly has never been an investment strategy. It just sort of happened because every time we manage to make our latest renovator's delight a pleasant place to live, we make a life decision that means we need to move on. Our latest home is a case in point. A 1920s worker's cottage, it was completely unrenovated when we moved in. When we first saw it six years ago, I fell instantly and passionately in love. Gorgeous George could feel the next 10 years of his life slipping away in a haze of electrical and plumbing disasters requiring costly intervention by a veritable hoard of tradesmen. He was right.
It was tiny, higgledy piggledy, and within a few months of moving in, the back stairs started to fall off. The garden was a classic overgrown nanna garden and I fell instantly in love.
Then GG and I took to the garden with a chainsaw because we couldn't actually move through a jungle of enormous overgrown azaleas and crepe myrtles - there were at least 20 large ones. Then we started building an extension and knocked half the house off, including the pantry in the kitchen, meaning what little space I had was draped in jars of pickles and cans of beans. Then the Boho Babe moved back home with her two cats, meaning we suddenly had four cats and a dog all living in a teeny tiny timber cottage with a bathroom you could only get through by walking along a timber plank. She spent six months sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the "spare" room which also housed our home office and the only wardrobe shared by three adults. The Geek had more sense and lived in a very nice share house in Lane Cove with all mod cons.
And then it rained ... and rained ... and rained. I spent all my spare time mopping up the mud than ran merrily under the boarded up space where the back door had been. The dog was permanently mud brown and the cats were even more bad tempered than usual.
But anyways, the extension has been finished, the roof has been fixed, the Babe has moved out with ONE of her cats - and that is another story - and the garden is coming along nicely. And one thing from the original garden I kept are the tiger lilies. Every year they come out, all glowing orange and covered in velvety brown spots, and every year I dance a little jig even as I manage to cover myself in chocolate brown pollen. There is just something about an orange lily that makes every day a good one, even if you live in a teeny tiny worker's cottage that has seen better days.

A new year

Around my neck of the woods, you know the holidays are really over by the number of newbies striding around the park dressed in nice neat walk shorts, polo tops and trainers that are positively blindingly new. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a good thing. I love my walk/runs, even if I do look like a purple-faced turnip on legs dressed in an ancient T-short and leggings as I flounder around my chosen route. Gorgeous George never accompanies me as he has decided that exercise is a waste of time and prefers to kick back and read the paper instead, in spite of looking rather like a bald bumble bee.
But this holiday season, when I would usually have abandoned most of my exercise in favour of eating and drinking too much, I was baby sitting our daughter's young Kelpie. Said daughter, the Boho Babe, and her partner went to Cairns for a week of slumming it in the pool drinking beers while I dealt with Hurricane Hector. Hector needed to be run at least 4km every day or he would bark ... and bark ... and bark. Personally, I think he needs a job, but there aren't many flocks of sheep around here and as he's only 8 months old, a job in retail is at least a year or two away. Luckily my little old white fluffy dog, Bertie, came to the rescue and found himself being rounded up several times a day. he even discovered that when hit by 25kg of kelpie he was able to do a 360 degree somersault followed by a head first pike into the floorboards, no mean feat when you're almost 11.

But probably the worst thing was the early start. Hector likes to be up and out and about by 5.30am, so it was pretty usual for me to have run 5km, thrown the ball for an hour, read the paper, had a cup of tea and tidied the house by about 7.30am. After which I sat slumped on the couch like a beached flounder, waiting for bed time.
By the time the Babe got back, I was a shattered wreck. After that, the start of the working year is a bit of a relief. I can sleep until 6.30am when the cats start standing on my head demanding their breakfast. Who needs an alarm clock.

The first step

I always imagined I would work until I dropped off the peg or at least turned 65. Sadly fate - and a rather unpleasant person in senior management - did not share this assumption and about a year ago I found myself in my mid-50s sitting on my bum at home wondering what I was going to do next given that no one will give me a job doing what I know how to do really well.
As a journalist writing has been a massive part of my everyday life for decades and, despite having a Facebook page on which I stalk my kids, as well as a deep affection for email, I've decided I need another outlet for the words I no longer get paid to write. Hence, this blog - and the book that I've been writing, just like every other unemployed "freelance" journalist in the world.
I'd also like to chronicle, for myself at least, the next phase in my life as I try and work out what I'm going to do with myself, particularly now my husband Gorgeous George and I are living on one wage while still having a mortgage and three cats, a dog and two goldfish to support.
Besides, I think it's time for me to explore this blogging stuff, even though my techie son, True Geek, has pointed out that if I am doing it, that means it is totally "yesterday" and about to die a miserable death. According to my kids the demise of Facebook is also imminent purely because I happen to have an account - which would be sad because some weeks it is the only way I know what they are doing and where they are.
Bertie the dog is happy though. I am home, able to open the door for him to come and go as he wishes. He is asleep on his cushion next to me, secure in the knowledge that all is right in his world. Now I just have to figure how to upload photos.