yesterday was plain awful...

...yesterday was plain awful! ("Annie")

I have no idea what was going on yesterday but it was a terrible, horrible, awful day.
(The Jasmine is blooming, let's blame that.)
I had spent the night before waking roughly every hour for no reason I can think of.
When it was time to be getting up, all I wanted was to go back to sleep.

I dressed, ate breakfast, went to the bus stop.
All while yawning my head off.
(not literally, my head is still attached)
My head, which felt like it weighed a ton.

Got to work, still yawning, did a 5 hour shift, yawning the whole time.
The heavy head developed into a headache, the legs were aching badly, my left hip gave painful tweaks several times during the day.
And my brain? Just wasn't working.
I felt dull all day, like my brain had left and gone on a holiday.

After work, I dragged myself to the bus stop, napped on the bus and almost missed my stop, caught the second  bus, finally got home.
I was never so glad to sit down in my life!

I heated a frozen pizza for dinner, (a new brand that I hadn't tried before, it wasn't nice!), because I just couldn't be bothered cooking.
Then I took a double dose of anti-histamine, some migraine tablets, then yawned my way through a couple of hours while reading blogs and leaving a comment or three.
I didn't want to go to bed too early because then I'd be fully awake at 1am.

Eventually went to bed and Hallelujah!! woke up this morning feeling much more alert.
The difference is amazing!
I'm me again!
Today's shift just flew by, with smiles, laughing, conversations (short ones) with customers.
Coming home was a joy.
I've been home now for 3 hours and I'm still feeling great, I even constructed a proper dinner.
Hard boiled egg and tuna salad.

It's nice to feel normal.

yesterday

Yesterday morning I was awake at my usual ungodly hour, sitting in bed, drinking coffee, reading a book, when I had a sudden urge to bake.

So I got up and puttered around the kitchen assembling ingredients, then baked a batch of Snickerdoodles. With craisins.

When the last few came out of the oven it was finally daylight, so I showered and dressed, then, still feeling the urge to cook something, I made pancakes for breakfast.
Then dragged out the Easi-Yo and started a tub of yoghurt.

I cleaned up all the dishes, put on a load of washing, and can you believe it? I still wanted to cook!
So I made pea and ham soup.
That's a soup that takes a long time, simmering until the split peas have disintegrated, then grated carrot and grated potatoes are added along with finely sliced celery, repeat the simmering until the potatoes have disintegrated.
Add a small slurp of worcestershire sauce, (Spring Gully make a gluten free one), and a larger slosh of tomato sauce. Simmer a bit longer to meld all the flavours.

With all the simmering and grating and stirring, finally I'd had enough of cooking.

But  now I have enough soup for 4-5 serves, so that's plenty for the freezer, and I have two large containers of Snickerdoodles. With craisins.
And I have yoghurt to take to work for a snack before my shift starts!

I won't have to cook for days!
Well, except for breakfast. Porridge won't cook itself.

Sunday Selections #32

It's Sunday Selections time again!
Time to post photos that have been hiding away in your computer files, photos that you may have completely forgotten about.
Have a hunt through your files and find them.

This idea comes to us from Kim at frogpondsrock, who realised one day that she takes many more photos thatn she uses, as we all do, and wanted to post some of the older ones on her blog.

A once a week meme seemed like a good idea, so Sunday Selections was born, and anyone at all can join in.

I often choose a theme for my Sunday Selections and this week my theme is :

STORMY SKIES

Only two photos today, and if you've seen them before, I apologise; I just can't find the photos I'd intended to use.

I remember taking these shots about four years ago when I'd looked outside to see bright blue sunny skies, then within the hour these clouds came over, filling the sky so the day became very dark.

To join in with Sunday Selections, post photos of your choice under the Sunday Selections title, then go to Kim's site, add your name to her linky list, and leave her a comment.
Then have a look at what others have posted for their selections.
There are some really good photographers out there.

little gardens everywhere

This is the driveway that leads in from the side street that I use as my entrance.

That's my flat on the right.

 The driveway goes right through the complex,

 past many more blocks of flats,

 and goes out to the main road, which is also an entrance. The main entrance.

 There are little gardens everywhere,

 even inside some of the secluded courtyards behind each block.

 This is a view of the garden I can see from my small front porch. It's mostly roses, geraniums and lavenders.

There's even a couple of seats under shady trees.

The blocks of flats lining the driveway on the main road side have very pretty gardens. I think the people have been living in those for a very long time. There are flowering bushes, green shrubs, pot plants and hanging baskets too. There's windchimes and other pretty ornaments either standing or hanging.
People have chairs and little tables on their side or back porches to sit at on a sunny afternoon.

As you can see it's a really pretty housing complex and I'm glad to be here.
I haven't met many of the others yet, but those I have met seem really friendly and nice.

this is my home now

This block of flats, two up, two down,  is built in a "T" formation.

 Four flats in front, four flats in the "T" behind, which I didn't take a photo of. Yet.

 This little bit of the block, is mine. My new home.
The balcony above the front door belongs to the upstairs flat.
It looks small, and when I first saw it, I worried a little. How on earth was I going to live in this?
But once I stepped inside I was reassured. Not a mansion by any means, but plenty big enough.
After all, I'm only one person, how much space do I really need?
So I'm well settled, the flat is very, very familiar already and after only two weeks I get a sense of coming home when I unlock the front door on arriving home from work.

This photo is part of the garden that fronts the complex on the main road side.
It's quite a large complex, more than 100 flats altogether, with a main entrance from the busy main road, and another entrance from a side street.

I haven't taken a lot of photos around here yet, I've been a little busy with the unpacking at first, then the working out of bus timetables so that I can get to work on time.

A minor snafu on the first day, now I make sure I catch the bus earlier than the one I want, in order to catch the second bus. The connections don't mesh very well, there's quite a lot of time spent waiting at bus stops.

Thankfully the weather is nice and by the time winter rolls around again, I'll be well used to the routine and waiting in the rain won't bother me.

I suspect I may be living in an internet black hole

You know those places where internet connections are iffy at best and nonexistent at worst?

Like this place.
My new home.
So many days now, when I try to connect, the little green light on my usb stick is red instead and page connections are so slow I could cook and eat a meal and then clean up the dishes while waiting for my emails to load.

Well, almost.

Today I've tried to connect three times, finally getting a green light just now at 9.35 pm.
Of course now I'm too tired to actually bother with surfing the web or reading blogs.

"No-one" has mentioned the problem may just be that there are too many homes too close together here in this complex that I now call home.
She could be right.
It may just be a case of finding the right time of day to turn on and connect with all my friends out there.
For most of this week, the ideal time has been around 5-5.30pm.
Last week it was around 7pm.

I'm going to start a diary type page in my notebook and see if there's an optimum time for each particular day. Maybe Wednesdays are always going to be 9.30, maybe weekends will be mornings......

This could seriously interfere with my nanna naps.......I may have to give them up.

so yesterday I went back to work

After having ten days off, which included two weekends and moving house, I found myself back at Coles.

What with zipping back and forth between the two places, cleaning one for a final inspection, (which went very well), and cleaning the other so I could live in it, I kind of feel like I haven't had much time off at all.
I was expecting to be busy, I just thought I might have at least a 3 day weekend to put my feet up.
Still it's done now and I can apply for another few days off when I want to.

Anyway, back at work....I now have to catch two buses to get there, so clearly I can no longer do the early morning shift. I've heard that my regular customers have been missing me and if I'm truthful, I've missed them too.

I checked the bus timetables to make sure I knew what time to catch the first one in time to connect with the second one. A small miscalculation meant that I was late to work by 6 minutes. That won't happen again. I'm never late and I'm quite proud of that record.

It does make for a long day though. Previously I'd leave home, walk for 15-20 minutes, work 4 hours, then stroll on home. Now, I walk to the bus stop, wait for a bus, get off down by the intersection and wait for the next bus, get off at the stop at the top of the road and walk on down to Coles. Reverse the process to come home again, and I'm out of the house (flat) for close to 7 hours.  I'll get used to it.

The middle of the day shift is a bit harder because there are so many shoppers doing a major grocery shop, instead of the few items I'm used to processing, I'm doing trolley loads almost continously. I'll get used to that too. I've done it before, I just need to remember to slow down and care for my back and shoulders.

The best part of coming home after such a long day away?
Coffee and sitting down with my feet up.

the evidence

Remember I said the previous tenant kept birds?
Check this>

 Spilled, caked on birdseed on the internal hinges in the wardrobe (and in the kitchen cabinets too)

Unspeakable grunge that I had to scrape off the floor of the top-of-wardrobe section. I think it was glue that held the cages in place.

Bird droppings everywhere. This one on the bathroom windowsill in the enclosed back porch.

 How about my rangehood? Looks nice and clean?

Look inside, down through the grill. More birdseed. How the heck am I supposed to clean that out? The vacuum doesn't reach in there.

 One of the many cobwebs I've since swept away.

Plaster dust left in corners and on windowsills.

Thank goodness it's done now.

Just have to sweep the dusty cobwebs off the front porch light.

Sunday Selections #31

It's Sunday Selections time again!
Time to post photos that have been hiding away in your computer files, photos that you may have completely forgotten about.
Have a hunt through and find them.

This idea comes to us from Kim at frogpondsrock, who realised one day that she takes many more photos than she uses, as we all do, and wanted to post some of the older ones on her blog.

A once a week meme seemed like a good idea, so Sunday Selections was born and any one at all can join in.

I often choose a theme for my Sunday Selections and this week my theme is:

YELLOW

 The yellow flower and the deeper gold of the bee.

 A bright yellow contrast against the blue petals.

 Pale yellow petals surrounding the darker yellow centre.

 Sunny yellow roses.

 Bright yellow buttons making the petals look so very white.

 The palest hint of yellow in the centre petals.

Clear buttery yellow.

So yellow it's almost orange.

To join in with Sunday Selections, post photos of your choice under the Sunday Selections title, then go to Kim's site, add your name to her linky list, then leave her a comment.
Then have a look at what others have posted for their Sunday Selections.
There are some really good photographers out there.

in case you were wondering....

...these...

 ...are pretty nice.
 Licorice Fruit Bites. By Fyna.
(I've had some before, but a different brand, and they weren't so nice.
All I could taste was artificial flavour and colour. Nothing at all to distinguish one colour from another.
Even the licorice didn't taste like licorice.)
But these ones above actually tasted like licorice! And the fruit flavours all tasted different!
There's pink, green, yellow and orange. They don't taste like real fruit, but they are still nice.
As with most things of this type, the pink colour (flavour?) is the best.


But this.....

....was even better.
Beef casserole with mashed potatoes.
With all the goings on involved with moving, I'd been eating things that didn't take much preparation or cooking.
Quick and easy.
Sandwiches, soup from the freezer....
For a week.
I was ready for some real food.
Mmmm, yumyumyum.

the perils of a new kitchen

A much longer spout on the tap........

....... means one broken spongebob squarepants juice glass.

The rest of the kitchen is almost entirely satisfactory.
Almost?...(I heard you asking)

Well, a low under bench oven means the teatowel hanging on the handle sweeps the floor every time I open the oven door. There's no towel rail, so that's where it has to hang until I get one. I just have to remember to remove the towel before opening the oven.
A paper towel dispenser on the wall just beside where the oven mitts are might be happening too.

The other corner is a little crowded and I need somewhere else to stash all this stuff.
There's no more room in any of the cupboards, so I was thinking of a triangular shelf in the corner, just above the tiles.
But I've changed my mind on that. The wall directly above the clock is adjacent the "window" which looks out the front door, it's 58cm from corner to "window", so I'm thinking a straight shelf 55cm wide x 15cm deep, just above the tiles is a much better idea. I can put all those sugar, coffee, milo jars on that, plus a mug or three, then a shallower shelf just above that for the vitamin bottles.

The clock is a problem. Where the heck am I going to hang that? Do I even really need it?

The grey benchtop you can see there is actually green, I have no idea why it shows as grey.

am I a whizz at unpacking?

Why yes, yes I am.

 I started with this.....(notice the bed is already made; first priority)

 and this.....(method in the madness, can't shower until these are put away)

 this....I've lost a whole cabinet from the kitchen. It's on the back porch.

A bit more of the bathroom/laundry chaos.


Now I have this...

 dvd's unpacked, TV set up and working....

 ...most of the kitchen stuff stashed in the available cupboards...

 the laundry/bathroom is looking respectably tidy.

And look at this!!   Bookshelves behind the bedroom door!!
I'm not sure if the original purpose of these shelves was for books, but they're the perfect height and depth, so that's what I'm using them for.
This frees up a couple of bookshelves in the lounge so I can fill them with even more dvd's. Eventually.

There's still a lot of tweaking to be done, things have been shoved just anywhere, so there'll be weeks of sorting and rearranging. But that's the sort of thing I like to do, so I'll be happily occupied.

I'm in.....

Well, here I am, for better or worse, in my new home.

I was told that the maintenance schedule included repairs, cleaning and painting.

Repairs?  Well the broken taps over the laundry tub were replaced.  The rusty hotplate is still there.

Paint? The replacement door has been painted and all other doors and window frames too.
We opened the windows immediately to let the paint smell out.

Cleaning?  Well!! If this is what they call cleaning, I could teach them a thing or two. I signed the paperwork to say I was accepting an acceptably clean flat, while quietly resolving to scrub everything as soon as I was fully unpacked and settled.

There are cobwebs.
There is dust.
The top-of-wardrobe cupboard had a few seeds of the bird food variety and also dried bird droppings. UGH!
 Apparently that's where the previous tenant kept his bird cages.
He also had a pet turtle. With that and the birds, that explains why the back porch is fully encosed with shade cloth, so they could fly and roam.

Now, I need that top-of-wardrobe space to store things like sheets and towels, because there is no linen cupboard. There is an under basin cupboard in the bathroom, but no room there for towels etc once I put my soaps etc there. Plus it smells of mould, so I'm leaving one of the doors oen to air it out.

I worked almost non-stop yesterday arranging things and unpacking boxes, trying to fit things in.  There's a lot that won't fit and I'm going to have to declutter even more than I thought. All of the boxes stacked in the lounge, kitchen and bedroom have been emptied and flattened. Things have been stuffed in just anywhere, to be sorted at some later date.

I expected to be disoriented when I woke this morning, but no, I knew immediately where I was. 
I got the electric hotplates working and fried my last egg for breakfast, made toast too, with the in-oven grill.
I won't be doing that again, it took forever to heat up. I'll have to resurrect the old toaster and hope it still works. The hotplates also take a long time to heat up and then take forever to cool down again. I'm going to really, really, miss having a gas stove.

Tomorrow, I'm going to make a start on unpacking the boxes stacked in the back porch. Quite a few of them have books, which I will put on the built in shallow shelves behind the bedroom door.
Somewhere in one of those boxes I'm hoping to find my I-pod dock, my iron and the middle sized saucepan.
And my street directory, the phone book, my stash of toothpaste and brushes, (enough to last me two years).

For now, though, I'm taking a break. Sitting here with my feet up, a hot water bottle against my back, tapping away at my keyboard.

crappy carpet

When I first moved in here, I noticed the carpet had some ugly and large stains on it.
Now that I'm moving out, I need to get the carpet steam cleaned.
The property manager requires a receipt as proof.

I'll have it done, but after eight and a half years, the already old and worn carpet is even more worn and not looking so good.

In spite of me trying various spot cleaners, the stains remain.
The footpaths around items of furniture and from room to room are very trodden down.
I'm not sure they'll ever be revived.
I'm fairly sure this is the original carpet, installed when the unit was built.
Sometime around 300BC.

I've also noticed, over the last eight and a half years, that this particular carpet, doesn't like to let go of its dirt. I can vacuum for hours in multiple directions, and still have to crawl around afterwards on my hands and knees picking up bits that cling to the carpet.

For these reasons I am very, very, grateful that there is no carpet in the new flat.

Moving on......I've emailed a cleaning crew to give me a quote on an end-of-lease clean.
I found out which company my property managers have used and liked in the past and decided to use them.
This way the required standards should be met.
(I want my bond money back!)

I didn't ask for details about the service, whether or not they include such things as steam cleaning of carpet, washing windows, cleaning exhaust fans etc.
I'm hoping they do include those things.

I'll send another email and ask, because if they don't include these things, I'll be washing the windows myself, and I so don't want to.

busy, busy, busy

I won't be online much in the next few days.

There's work in the mornings, (sigh), then in the afternoon I'll be doing other things.

Unfun things.
Don't want to do them things.

Like sweeping down the walls and washing off marks.
Dusting off the light fittings.

Vacuuming the carpet.
(there's no carpet in my new flat, YAY!)

Washing windows and doors.

I'll still pop in if I have a minute or so, even just to check my email and skim a few posts, but if I don't leave comments, I'm sure you'll understand.

Sunday Selections #30

It's Sunday Selections time again!
Time to post photos that have been hiding away in your computer files, photos that you may have completely forgotten about.
Have a hunt through and find them.

Sunday Selections is brought to us by Kim, from frogpondsrock, who realised one day that she takes many more photos than she uses, as we all do, and wanted to post some of the older ones on her blog.
A once a week meme seemed like a good idea, so Sunday Selections was born, and anyone at all can join in.

I usually choose a theme for my Sunday Selections, but this week, instead, I bring you photos of something I created.

When I first moved in here, this is what I found, instead of a kitchen door.  Useless at keeping heated or cooled air in.

So I made a screen.

From a large piece of cardboard, (part of the box my refrigerator had been delivered in) and dozens of randomly selected magazine pictures.

 Here's a closer look.

 The side that faces into the kitchen has food related photos. I try not to look at that side too much because it makes me want to eat.

Here's a closer look.

(I do have close-up photos of some of the pictures I used, but I can't seem to find them).


To join in Sunday Selections, post photos of your choice under the Sunday Selections title, go to Kim's site, add your name to her linky list, then leave her a comment.
Then have a look at what others have posted for their selections.
There are some really good photographers out there.

remember the monkeys that decorated my christmas tree?

(In December 2010)

(Harvey Banana)  What's going on?

 What are you guys doing in this box?

 (Hugo) We're moving to a new home. Wanna come?

(Harvey Banana) Of course! Move over, let me in.

(I keep these boys around for small visitors to play with).