New experience

I was going to post updates on my knitting and some sleepy cat photos but something more important to my life has arisen so the R&R stuff can wait.

I have spoken to my boss and he has allowed me to change my working hours for next week to fit in with a course I am doing from Tuesday to Friday. It means working/learning 15.5 hours Wednesday and Thursday, 12 hours Tuesday and 9 hours Friday (that'll be easy....if I don't fall asleep!). Thank goodness I'm rostered on to work this Saturday and not the same week as the course.

What am I doing you ask?

I'm training to be a forklift driver!! :D

I figured if I can drive a 4.5tonne GVM truck with 3 horses loaded on it around the hills/corners surrounding Kempsey for years then I can balance an equally breakable load of packaged wine casks/bottles around winery warehouses. It will cost me over a week's current pay to do the course. One of my friends at the winery said not to forget to claim the course fees on my tax and that having a forklift driver's ticket is a definite bonus to gaining a job at the winery. He should know as he's a packaging manager there.

Wish me luck :D!

I'll try to find a few mins each day to take a pictorial record to post here as this is a bit of a milestone for me.

Cheers,
RobynLouise xo

Weekends…..

....are usually the time when I cook for the week, wash the laundry and clean house and possibly potter around gardening.

I don’t really like cleaning house through the week as I already spend between 26-30hrs doing pretty much the same at work – sweeping, mopping, vacuuming and wiping stuff down. To come home and do it just seems like I haven’t left work. I think I need a change of mindset as I should make myself do at least one job a day at home then I can have more of my weekends free – even those ones where I'm rostered on Saturday morning and don’t finish till 9am.

This last week had a few little surprises in it. I discovered that I can cook on my woodstove. Why on earth I never realised that before is beyond me but I thought the little handle was so one could lift the tiled section up to clean under it…..I never thought of putting my camping teapot or my saucepan there. That’s going to save me a little bit of gas charges over Winter.

I also received a lovely hand knitted beanie from Shirley over in WA. Adore the colours and finding myself living in it on cold days as it’s so warm! Thank you again Shirley!

I finally bought the knitting needles and found some 8-ply wool for the sock knit-along at the DTE forums but they have been sitting there mocking me as I haven’t even cast a stitch on yet! I really need some more socks to wear outside work so I’ll have to motivate myself!

Hoping everyone had a lovely weekend!

Cheers,

RobynLouise xo

Discover…..

I hate Winter, but I love the sound of rain on a tin roof

I hate cold weather, but I love watching the fire and feeling the warmth from the combustion stove

I hate being surrounded by people, but I love working somewhere that has hundreds of employees

I hate socialising, but I love meeting new people

I hate feeling lonely, but I love living alone

I hate pubs, but I love that it costs nothing to enter and the entertainment is free

I hate that past relationships have gone awry, but I’d love to try another

I hate listening to the rain, sitting in front of the fire, feeling lonely but I'd love if that would change...if I could change.

RobynLouise

Tempting, Toothless, Temperatures and Tasty

Look…look….I found a local who sells free range eggs! $4/dozen if you collect and $5 delivered. I fried 2 to have with my bacon this morning and they are the freshest, most golden eggs I have had since I had my hens on the farm 2 years ago. Nothing like the flavour of a fresh egg. I could be tempted to eat lots of these poached, fried and scrambled but I’ll be good and use most of them for cooking. Beats the beejeebers out of the pale runny “organic” eggs you can buy from the supermarket. She only lives a couple of blocks away too. Another thing I love about living in a village J.

I was eating crunchy ANZAC biscuits last night and thought one bit was overcooked then realised I was a bit short on the eating equipment! Excuse the "morning face" WYSIWYG!!

Thank goodness for friends to ask (thanks Di!) and Dentists on line and that they have a vacancy tomorrow. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s going to cost me a couple of hundred dollars L.

BRRRRRRRR………it’s definitely Winter!! By CRIKEY it was cold last night! I lit the fire in the wood stove again but made sure I stacked some extra wood in it before I retired for the night. There was a nice crispy first of the year frost in my back yard at 7.30am when I finally dragged myself out of bed. Didn’t think to take a photo but everyone who’s lived with it knows what a good frost looks like – right? So I thought I'd post a picture to make everyone in the cold climes feel warmer.

Made myself some chicken stock yesterday in the slow cooker using chicken necks and then added to it to make chicken and vegetable soup for lunch today. Nothing like hot homemade soup on a cold day. The ingredients are all purchased but I hope to change that in the future, well except for the chicken, but then maybe I can find someone around here who will give me a non laying freebie or sell it to me cheap.

Cheers to all plus keep warm wishes to those in the Southern Hemisphere!

RobynLouise

House or Home??

Today I was going to drive to some land that is for sale about 80km from where I live and look at its prospects for current horse agistment and possible future home site. However, I had a think about it and it’s really a waste of time at the moment as I don’t have the money on hand and I haven’t asked the bank if I am eligible for a loan. It was just an excuse to go away from here for a while and I was thinking it would make me happy to have a day out.

So I had a look at the list of “to-dos” on my fridge door and when I opened the vertical blinds I realised that I really wanted to use the closed in veranda, for something besides storage, and I need to do some cooking that I’ve been putting off for weeks. Then there are the weekly/fortnightly/monthly chores to do that are always “there”.

I realised that what would make me happy is to make this place truly my home as I’ve been a bit dispossessed the last couple of years and slept in my car in a park, stayed at youth hostels,  friends and relatives homes and in another rental that I really disliked.

I’ve started customising the garden but that’s not something that happens overnight, like customising a room can, and gardens change by themselves anyway – flowers bloom, trees lose leaves in Winter and grow new ones in Spring, grass needs cutting and weeds are always popping out of the ground. It takes a long time to truly make your mark on a garden/yard and it’s not like you eat/sleep/live in it.

Guess I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m going to be renting for a while, something I haven’t done in 30 years, and I may as well make where I live my home not just a house that protects me from the weather and keeps me secluded and separated from the world outside its walls. Time to start laying real building blocks for my new future instead of floating around in the clouds watching the world go by and hoping I find a silver lining. I discovered today that I am the one who has always made safe/comfortable places for myself, and the children when they were younger, not either of my partners as they were too busy doing their own thing and expecting us to fit in. That’s two of the mistakes I’ve made in my life and there’s probably countless others that have been forgotten along the way.

Now it’s time to properly pick myself up, I thought I had before but I was mistaken, dust myself off and make a place for me again – even if it is just a step on the way to where I’d really like to be I need to give it a solid base as ricketty steps are dangerous.

Cheers,

RobynLouise