anyresemblance

I sent a letter to my love

I woke up with a shocking headache that I could only put down to my lack of exercise in the last 3 days. It was a salutary reminder that pressure of work will only feel worse if I don't carve out time for being outside and moving. I dragged myself out of bed (even though I would have preferred to just take another hour) and took Charlie out for a short but brisk walk. It helped. I posted another letter while we were out.

On return I reminded myself how to use typepad lists and updated my sidebar with my accounting. You'll note I have neglected to put the exercise one there. Right now, that is between me and runkeeper.

Miscellany

 

We have an elderly tortoiseshell of 15 years, the sister of our sadly missed old, grey boy. She has always been cranky:  despising men, strangers and most of all, Charlie. She has become a very picky eater and lost an alarming amount of weight in the past few months. We finally took her to the vet who did tests and told us that she has an over active thyroid. We have booked her in for radioactive iodine treatment which will:

1. preclude me having to give her a pill twice a day and consequential damage to my hands and trauma to her
2. give her super powers as she turns her radioactive so she lives for ever
3. apparently turn her from cranky cat to smoochy cat

I am not sure I am ready for 3 as I have had 15 years of her being cranky cat and am used to her imperious ways (she must have burmese in her as she is very chatty and inquisitive).  Of course, all this costs $$$ but not as much as the cost to our family harmony with her gone for ever.

I am preparing for more travel.  We have a whiteboard calendar on the inside of the pantry where we each have a colour and forward plan our shifts, travel plans etc.  The next 4 weeks look frantic and include the following:

• me going to Singapore, Dubai, Singapore
• moving one kid to college
• me going to Tokyo
• car for service
• garden overhaul
• cat to operation
• other kid starting back at college, final semester
• other kid for dental implant

I am grateful that a good friend gave me a gift voucher for a massage for Christmas and have booked it for mid Feb thinking I will need a reprieve from this schedule.  

 

Grim

Quite the grimmest of work days 🗿requiring Panadol before 9am. Lost the will to live on a early call and that set the tone for the whole day. Let's hope tomorrow is marginally better.

So much for the relaxing benefits of a weekend. I started at 7.30 am and have not stopped. And I have a sore toe.

This week my goal is to master a new up do. I had my hair on top of my head at the recent wedding festivities as it was so hot I could not bear it near my face. You can't see it piled here but I promise it looked better than Nigella in Thailand. I also eschewed the sequins. I'm a light weight but when I put it on in 39c heat, I thought I would expire and instead wore the faux halter, floaty skirt number.

It is properly cold here today. Sort of summer in Scotland cold and I am wearing a cashmere cardigan. Not Wisconsin cold, of course. Those hardy mid westerners must be rolling their eyes at NYC.

Spidey senses

I am not frightened of spiders. I hate moths with their fat bodies, cockroaches disgust me but I have no problem sharing my home with spiders. As long as they keep their distance. This one was on the screen door when we went out of the house but absent by the time we came back. I did check my bedroom ceiling every night to check it was not looming over me.

Sunday

What's better than a weekend at the beach? A long weekend at the beach. It is satisfying to have a Sunday evening when you know the next day is a public holiday.

More beach walks with Charlie, ice cream, wine, pizza and watching some old episode of the great British bake off and Sherlock. All good.

Beachy

When I was married, we had a house at the beach. We spent half our weekends and most holidays there. Then we got divorced and sold the house.

I'm at the beach and remembering the peace of listening to the ocean at night, doing nothing much all day, and playing house in a holiday kitchen.

The dog loves the beach. After a 2.5 hour car ride he was ready to stretch his legs. We walked 2km down the crescent of the beach last night. He ran in the waves, dropped his ball and waited for the surf to bring it out again. He was exhausted by the time we got home.

The photo is the exact view from the deck at 7am. We walked the beach again but came back by the path along the road. We had breakfast at the muffin shop. We went to the Moruya markets. We bought tomatoes and basil and bread and had our eyebrows threaded for $20 and drank fresh juices. Charlie was admired by 50 people. We went to the beach this afternoon by only stayed a short time as the storm swept in.

Now I'm showered and de-sanded, drinking champagne, reading Dave Robicheaux and watching the storm. There are still a dozen surfers out there. I'm not sure I would be doing that as there has been a dead whale carcass in the vicinity and feeding sharks but am sure they know what they're doing.

The best kind of weekend.

Friday random generator

Did you love Serial?  Try Thisiscriminal.  Scary but compelling.  You can thank me later.

Hot cross buns in Coles? Don't think I didn't buy some. Kind of hoping it rains at the coast so I can light the wood burning fire and drink tea and eat hot cross buns.

We have a thing happening in the most luxurious hotel I ever stayed at in Dubai in April.  Excited.  Last time I was there I gorged out on amazing middle eastern food.  I'll be there again in two weeks but staying at lesser (read 5 star instead of 5 star plus) hotel.  I don't care, every hotel I stay at there is wonderful.   I love it there.  I know it is all manufactured but there are people from all over the world and the food is amazing and they have Waitrose.

If you're ever in Toowoomba, I highly recommend The Cubby.  Like a grown up wendy house.  I hear the flower festival in September is worth visiting.

 

 

 

Wasted

This summer is full of weird weather. It's not that it's been cold. Far from it. But we've had a load of rain, the grass is uncharacteristically green and there are rampant weeds everywhere. It's been disgustingly humid and not the dry, baking heat I prefer. I feel we've had no hot, balmy nights but the kids and is re heading down to the beach tomorrow, Charlie in tow, for the Australia Day long weekend.

The pup was so disgusted with the weather today that he took refuge under my desk. He fell asleep and let me put my feet on him. The thing I love best about my work life style is having the dog spend time with me. He doesn't care about office politics and never annoys me.

Take a letter

I wrote two letters this evening.  One to my brother and his wife who I will see in Scotland for his milestone birthday in April and the other to my old friend, R.

I met R 30 years ago this month when we both went to work in Tripoli.  I was totally unprepared for life in Libya (how could you prepare for living in a nutty, totalitarian regime though, lord knows, life is grim there now?) Anyway, she was older than me, beautiful (she still is), whip smart having just finished her doctorate on some arcane 17th century writer, worldly wise and astonishly glamorous.  I was lucky to meet her.  We lived through some precarious adventures and perils together in those reckless days, she shaped many of my tastes and broadened my horizons.  

When we both left Libya for the first time, she went back to Australia and me to London.  We met in Boston some months later and travelled around America together.  We saw each other frequently over the next five years, on her flying visits to London or her visiting my parents who adored her.  I have aerograms she wrote me from Turkey, from Italy, from Malta, from Libya where she eventually returned with her then husband.  I went to visit her in 1990 and helped her leave that husband smuggling her jewellry out of Libya and persuading her husband to let her visit me in London.  She never went back.  I made my first visit to Australia to her property in Kangaroo Valley where she lives with her present husband.  And then, the years just passed without me seeing or talking to her.

I am not sure what happened but it was a gap that seemed harder and harder to bridge the longer it went on.  I saw her a couple of years ago but I felt fragile and the intimacy wasn't there though we both looked at each other like we were scared to speak of how close we had been.  Then, this week I  looked at some of her letters from twenty five years ago and thought, as my most prolific correspondant after my father, she deserved me writing to her.  I'd like to renew that connection and I hope the letter helps.