Food and family all night long

On this long and lazy day I'm enjoying the sunshine and my garden. I'm having trouble remembering what day it is cos I didn't go to church this morning cos i didn't get to sleep until this morning sometime, after an engagement party we went to. So I'm all confused.

Don't you love family gatherings. Except I had to keep looking twice at a lot of people cos I wasn't sure if I was related to them and I'd forgotten who they were or if my brain was just overloaded with faces cos I'd spent too long staring at them. And arranging endless plates of those little cocktail onions tends to do that to you, too.

I got to see my 3 little nephews who i miss very much :) Lucky they missed me too and let me cuddle them lots LOL

On the way home in the car, i discovered the country countdown show (or whatever it was) on the radio and we listened to that with great glee and jubilation. Pity I'm not normally up at 1am or whenever it was, on a saturday.

Update on the bluetongue lizard- it has found a new hiding spot in a disused drainage pipe on the other side of the house. It sleeps on the footpath, I think, and runs and hides in there when I come along :) Maybe it likes a bit of variety. The one bit of footpath must get pretty boring after a while.

Oh look, a half finished blog post that I forgot to end. So here it is.

Flagpole dilemma and little bits of nothingness

I've been thinking about how pete's a citizen now. He's got dual citizenship (he's an american and an australian now, how confusing) so does that mean that if we got a flagpole, we'd have to share? get two flagpoles? or because he's outnumbered he only gets the australian one? What if I was a dual citizen of somewhere else? Do we have 3 flagpoles? We could count his parents and we could have the italian one too. we could just have a bunch of flags and it would be like umm the UN building? Well I don't have any flagpoles yet so it's not a high priority problem.
I think it's terrible when you see flags all neglected. It's usually on a business's property, cos nobody bothers. Criminal.

When I got up this morning I got confused and thought the state election was today. But I had to look on the website to see where to vote so I figured it out b4 I went running down the street trying to vote, when the place is probably closed. I wonder if anyone ever doesn't know that an election is on? I might not have known if I didn't listen to the radio at work. Although those placards and posters in people's front yards are quite popular. They give it away a bit if you're paying attention. Unless you just think everyone's feeling a bit political. I think I forgot to vote once, because I remember getting a fine, but that might have been just after we got married, and I moved. Or maybe not.

Whenever the weather warms up, I feel like reading that Tomorrow When The War Began series. Should I admit to that? Well I am. For some reason they remind me of summer. I wish he'd write some more. I don't know why I love them so much. Well why love anything I guess.

I might actually start doing my christmas shopping soon. Better now than 10 days before christmas. Not that I've got months to do it now though. Actually, I just realised that unless I start some on Thursday night (pffpffefffrffff) I won't be able to do any for almost another fortnight anyway. 10 days before it is then?!

I've been trying to find clothes for work. Everything is all either ugly, doesn't fit or is too expensive and only half decent anyway. And it's getting too hot at work to wear long sleeves. What a drama.

We're having sweet potato and red kidney bean burritos for dinner tonight. Mum came over and asked about a vegetarian recipe for aunty marjie and I said this one's a good one. I thought it was such a good idea that now I'm gonna make them tonight. yum.

I've got two birthday and one father's day card that I haven't sent yet because i keep forgetting. If I forget much longer, they'll turn into christmas cards. And i haven't even thought about those yet.

I must be tired b/c my brain is going in weird places. I was just thinking how there's an awful lot of people on the planet. And it seemed sort of suffocating. But then it just seemed strange. A big blob of people on a big round blob of a world. You know what really freaks me out though. How everything will just go on forever. Eternity, I mean. Well it's probably the kind of thing that nobody can really comprehend but it just spins my head out. I have to distract myself, or it just gets in my head and freaks me oiut. Don't really know what that's about. Because I'm not worried about eternity, I just can't handle the concept??!!

Birthday parties and All the houses we have knoooowwwnnnn

I had a busy weekend involving kids birthday parties, church services and italian suppers.

I have decided that jumping castles should come supplied with some sort of life buoys or safety rails because once they fall down in the big plastic wobbling boinging thing, there's no getting up again anytime soon. And 'down' is under the feet of every other child in the jumping castle, so that isn't much fun either. And what are you going to tell them- jump softly now? more sedately? Well, all the kids went home happy so maybe the adults should all just close their eyes and grab the victims near the edge.
All this activity was at Emmi (my little sister)'s birthday party. We had the family birthday bbq on the saturday and her party for her friends on the sunday. We went to a place where you hire it out for 2 hours and they supply all the activities and some food. I'm glad I went because I figured she's only going to be this old and have birthday parties for so long :) I think she and her brother are going to catch up to me in height soon as it is :D

There's finally someone (Aunty Marjie to be exact, who just up and moved here) working the days I'm not at my old job. So I can stop stressing about that.
I love my new job, if I didn't mention that already.

Pete got his citizenship! I feel like we've been applying for it for so long that it can't have happened yet. Like when we got married and it felt like we were rehearsing for a wedding, and that it wasn't the real thing. Except then you got to go on honeymoon and move house, so you got acclimatised. Maybe I should make pete wear a hat or some large accessory or blow up his certificate and stick it on the front door. I could stick the australian flag to his back. A person-sized one of those australian-owned labels.

The wind is rattling the window-panes. Each of our houses has had its own peculiarities. Our first house was infested with cockroaches, which I unsuccessfully tried to kill with every anti-cockroach remedy known to man, and then some. I even tried leaving all the lights on at night to drive them out, but it just made them poop in the cupboard a whole lot, and made them used to to the light. That house also came with a maths class in the garage (yes that is what I said) and was, as a bonus, awfully big- big enough for us to have our own library room. The back yard, however, was only just big enough for the clothesline.

Our second house was absolutely beautiful and a not so big cottage and had a garden that was like a big park. It had an outside laundry with no hot water and mice, but I plugged the washing machine inside, in the hallway next to the toilet. Big parrots used to visit me and I'd feed them.

Our third house was more modern and had an amazing kitchen and a nice outdoor area, and a separate studio office for pete. It had mice inside, hardly got any sun for some reason, and had insane neighbours. Snails used to eat our mail, even though our mailbox was toxic with snailbait. We also had a resident St Bernard dog that was meant to live next door but used to keep me awake at night drinking from the pond outside our bedroom window (our front yard had no real fence).

Our fourth house was an 'L'- shape weatherboard and used to shake whenever a truck or a fast car went past. The heater and the airconditioner were up the other end of 'L' from the main bedroom, which could get a bit uncomfortable. The yard also was more ant-hill than dirt. The garage didn't keep anything clean. It did have a nice watering/sprinkler system in the garden though. And all the windows of the 'L' meant we got a lot of sun in summer.

And here we are in our fifth house. The power has a funny habit of going off at the safety switch now and then. It's being renovated around us and I can do what I want to the garden. It also has the convenience of being virtually next door to my mother's house lol.

Pete and I have a list of our 'perfect house'. All the houses put together had most of the stuff on the list!

George the cat is having territory issues with Bella the cat. Bella is mine, George is a inherited-with-the-house cat. He technically belongs two doors up since his owner sold this house and moved away, and her son two doors up took him. But George doesn't know that. I think the son/family feeds him. I feed him sometimes. He seems to sleep here a lot. I feel sorry for big fat Georgie.

Update on the lizard for Tor: It was last seen on the footpath near the sheltered corner of the house, and moved away rather sluggishly when I approached. That was the weekend b4 melbourne cup. It hasn't been seen since. But I haven't been here much to see it. I need a lizard movement detecting camera??

'Fernando' has been in my head all day- Why??

Well this hot tired first ramble is purely for my own entertainment. Come to think of it, they all are I think. Like keeping a diary when you're a teenager, hey Tor.
Seeing as my long-term memory isn't so great, if I don't write anything down, I'll get to 40 and wonder what on earth I did in the last 40 years. If it wasn't very interesting, at least I'll know and not be tormented by the thought that I can't remember something really vital, for the next 50 years.
At least I can attempt to keep in contact with people this way. Then I can blame them for not knowing what's going on :)
I do love spring. I have to say that cos I really miss it when it's gone. I keep seeing duck families wandering along the side of the road.
My garden is rambling, like me. Well, I'm trying to get it to ramble. In a planned sort of way. I guess that's me. Rambling in a sometimes planned sort of way. Or things just happen. Stuff everywhere and one of everything. I think that could apply to most umm spheres of my existence. Even my cooking. I take photos of my cooking sometime. When I'm particularly impressed by a masterpiece of a creation. Or when Pete's particularly impressed by it.
The cat is bothering me by sitting on the windowsill outside and meowing at me through the window. She doesn't even blink.
Tor, if you read this, I forgot to say I'm sorry about your guinea-pigs :( .
I am tired and will be glad when I'm only working one job.
Hey, Pete gets his citizenship soon! It's really weird. After all this time. And he's got no-one to blame but me:) I wanted it to be at the local Australia day thing, you know all the community stuff, very patriotic, but it's too difficult to change the date with the council.
We have a blue-tongue lizard living under the house, conveniently close to the garden tap and the hot water service. Well I didn't know it was a blue-tongue until my little brother told me it was, after I described it to him. (It didn't go sticking its tongue out for me and that was all my memory was going by). I will have to take a photo of it. I wonder if i can befriend it or if it will be eternally shy.
Tor, I love hydrangeas. I love lots of things though. That's the one of everything thing again. I hate agapanthas though. And ti-tree in places where it can prickle you when you walk past. And azaleas. Can't stand them. Better not go on about that too much. Or I'll change my mind and start to feel sorry for them because they're just misunderstood.
My one of everything rule extends to animals too. I've got the dog and cat, and apparently a blue-tongue now, so I'd still like to have a rabbit (again), and a chicken (well some more maybe for company) and a goat and a sheep and a pig if it didn't grow too big or squeal too loud, and a cow, and I'm sure something else once I figured out where to put them.
I'd like one of most fruit trees too. And a nice scented gum tree. Some smell better than others. And a paper-bark tree because I have fond memories of writing letters on them in school lunchtimes, just because we could:)