Home again

 I have returned from a 36 hour round trip to my parents.

Dad's niece (my cousin) turned 60 and Dad's brother-in-law (her father) 90 later in the year.

I stayed with Mum (with my sister's help) and a good time was had by all.

Image - a found pair of reading glasses, a charging cord and a water bottle. Background is a vinyl tablecloth with a rustic check pattern and flowers in green and yellow 

I have finished The French Revolution (well, Series Three of what threatens to be several more - it has become a running joke) and was cast into the audio wilderness on my drive home.

Due to no internet connection for the majority of the trip, sporadic mobile reception and negligible radio reception I was reduced to downloaded books or my wits. 

Image - a roundabout, locally known as roundabout as opposed to the turtle roundabout.  If you turn left off this roundabout you go along the front, rightish takes you the other way, to the basin and the playground with the wobbly thing and around past the golf club to eventually meet with you should you take the righter turn - if you go back the way you came you'd get back to the little roundabout.

If we are using similes regarding deserts and entertainment options then the books that I downloaded were a dune and a butte - I would love to say that my wits were an Oasis to complete the triumvirate but life is never that neat.

Image: wooden walkway along the front. On the other side of that strip of sand is the Pacific Ocean.

There wasn't even cricket this time around. And what with the moon in the mirror and the mosquitos and the sleeping in a strange bed the night before I needed something to keep me awake on the drive home today.

My first book was about Marple - right in the nerdzone for me. And there were a lot of my "ooh, did I read that one?" (Grandma M's bookshelves were amazing) - but there is only so much fictional character development you can take before you have to grapple with the creator, and Agatha can be challenging - or is that Enid? I conflate them at times.

(Should you desire, here is an Instagram of some excellent Miss Marple moments)

My other was a romcom that has had a few too many clangers that caught my ear and took me on tangents.

Like why was the main character going on about how the other main character was Australian, but obviously from her accent she too was from these fair shores and most of the book (well, 40% of what I have heard) is set in Australia 

Tomorrow is a day off work for house stuff and appointments. Today was a public holiday. We had pizza for dinner and didn't put any television on because the last night of school holidays can be watershed moments - can you believe Paris is within 2 years of finishing school?

Image: omg more stuff to pack and move before photos. A ladder, a surfboard and another stepladder.

And both V and I worked out that we have been in this house for longer than either of us have ever lived anywhere. For me 19 1/2 years!

What's your record?

A post about a post and a stick

 It is all kicking off soon...

The house sale process was going to happen a while ago but factors far beyond our control meant that we had a few days to get ready for Go Time on the house.

Of course, with my life being what it is at the moment, it really is only a few days.

A very few days.

Image is a black cat with a pink collar and yellow tag - very Carla Zampatti this season - laying on an old local newspaper and amongst unwrapped china. The green eyes evoke a defiant answer of wilful ignorance - or is it anarchy?

I work full-time - although chance and appointments have managed to break up every work week for the first five weeks of 2026.

My work has, through a business model imposed by their client's structures, required me to completely change a lot of rather nerdy things... But that wasn't what forced our delay.

Image is of a flood plain, lush and green and bisected by a large flood drain. There is a road with a right hook at a little bridge cleverly hidden by a power pole. There is a grey metal box that is something to do with the internet.

This weekend is a long weekend here. Monday is a public holiday and on this particular public holiday there is always a festival type thing at the public beach within walking distance of our house. 

So tomorrow a sign is being hammered in to our front yard to advise.

Image - this is not the sign that will be put in front of our house. The picture is of the local Catholic church up around the corner. I walk past it on my morning walk. The light behind the cross flicked out just after I took this picture earlier in the week. I don't know why - some people may theorise but not everything has to have explanation attached. Maybe just because.

However that handful of days that we had available to prepare did NOT include tomorrow as tomorrow I am travelling 200km to be with my beautiful Mum and lovely sister as my father will be celebrating my cousin's 60th and my uncle's 90th in a town 350km further on.

It's a lot of moving parts right now.

Image - the view the other way isn't bad either. Next doors wall accented by Alf's tree. Alf was our neighbour and the most interesting elderly Italian Guerilla Gardening gnome next door. When I first arrived 19 years ago he gave me tomato seeds but his last years were dedicated to his flame trees in council gardens so that his line of sight to the beach was marked well. A very lush lawn that honestly has grown since you were looking at it and in the distance an apartment complex.

And we too would love to see our new place - but we ourselves haven't found it yet. We have found a few places that will not be our new place.

Not a lot of them about either.

But I have confidence. It will happen.

6

Image: this is not a picture of current real estate prospects, rather appears to be a painting or print that my mother has had in her house for at least the majority of my life. It is an old weatherboard cottage surrounded by trees - there may be a water tank? It's on a hillside and the signature appears to be G Draissord?

I have been listening to a podcast on The French Revolution - I am on episode 4 of the third series and we have been lurching from one disaster to the next.

I can get through this.

Image - a meme stolen from the internet - I just googled and I am not the first to do so. Text says "One of the grand tragedies of history is that Maarten Nieuwenhove had a face born to wear an oversized Metallica t-shirt that smelled of weed but was forced to live in the 15th century" - nothing to do with French or Revolution I know. And unfortunately for Maarten, the only thing that he now known for unfortunately - a bit like Dr Guillotine I suppose.

BTW - things got interesting here while I was writing - a large stick insect had crawled through the slatted windows above the toilet. A BIG stick insect. 

V was advocating technology with a long handle via the vacuum. 

Paris had tried valiantly to be brave and capture it into a shoebox but her bravado failed at the last moment and so I was deputised (deputed?). 

I am the short one of the family and the slats are very tall. Unfortunately when the stepladder was brought in, the toilet blocked me horizontally so the tall ones had to work something else out. 

What worked in the end was a bigger stick for it to crawl upon then be moved back outside - it was last seen shaking it's fist at Paris - quite fitting.

Image - a meme. Text exchange between people approaching middle age that is somewhat amusing regarding technology and keeping secrets. Actuallychloehaseyes has typed "serious question for the millennials... my older cousin said she used to 'burn' cds for her crush. like... with (emoji of fire)?
was that a ritual? did it work? you guys were literally practising witchcraft just to get a text back? I'm scared of y'all (emoji of scary stuff)" beingiakezal responded "The old magic will not be discussed with the children of the new"

The so long thong song

(Cultural note - a thong in Australia is known as flip-flops or jandals or I don't know what elsewhere.  What some elsewhere people call a thong is a g-string here - glad we have cleared that up.  Below is regarding footwear not floss) 

 Lost in the annals of time,

Twas a tale of of a twin unentwined

On a merry-go-round dropped?

At a Mount Perry pit stop

My thong and her pair 

Split - life being unkind.

To a group Perry bound I lament-ed

The divorce left me hopping quite mad

For this "three pairs for ten"

The least worst of a neat half dozen

Slivered art between feet and and the pad.

For years long the lone thong 

Formed an alter - strong in the hope that she - the other, the lost - would walk right back in to our lives. 

Hope disintegrates to despair.

Unable to bear the pain of the lost possibility any longer 

One Tuesday evening I allowed her to be taken away in a rare Marie Kondo moment - was I wrong?

Christmas last my eldest 'Salina cleaned the inside of my car.

Dusted the dash,
Flossed the furniture,
Defragged the detritus tween the 

Here I have to interrupt myself - I was getting a bit d- d- d- and I thought that I would try my ham French on AI and see what we could do. I was trying to convey the concept of car seats using attempted phrasing of "derriere" and the places where one may put theirs, and I thought "throne" and put an extra d- in there to continue with alliteration and to an Aussie chick like me, that would be funny.

The French AI did not think that I was funny, and suggested that I not use the Anglo throne, perhaps I meant "troner" and so I thought " well it does sound more French-y, try that" and the dumb French AI dude said that traditionally the French did not associate the derriere with the "troner" and, well, you see what's going on.

Based on the search results, "trone derrier" (or likely trône derrière in French) refers to a few different contexts, primarily a phrase describing something sitting in a place of honor, or a specific design brand:

Trôner derrière (to sit/reign behind): Used to describe something prominently placed, such as a, "La patronne du magasin trône derrière la caisse" (The owner sits/reigns behind the cash register), or a large sculpture sitting behind a bar.

Trone (Parisian Design Brand): A brand specializing in modern, colorful, and unique ceramic toilets and bathroom fixtures.

"Sprout a craqué son slip" (TV Series): A series where a boy's best friend is his own butt (derrière), which sometimes rebels. 

If you were referring to a specific image or phrase in a context not listed here, please provide more details.

Cracking on with the thong.

So I tidied the pile left behind 

'Mongst the boxes of things that you find

When you sift through your life 

Mother and daughter and wife

And up pops this one of a kind.

"I found her" I glee with delight

Then it dawns with true oversight 

That it's never to be

Lest the fates intervene 

And I binned her pronto without fight.

Now the moral, I am sorry to say 

For this lament of the one believed astray

Is missing complete 

Like beneath the back seat 

The thong was going Schrodinger's way.

Sunday Selections

 I rarely follow blog themes, but on occasion get inspired. Unfortunately I don't really know the etiquette of memes but hat tip to River and Andrew who had their posts up this morning, thus striking the flame.

Image of a mob of Kangaroos across the road from my house. 

Kelly requested more roos. We regularly have many kangaroos - it may be the thing that we miss the most when we do move, as not many places in town offer this.

 

Painted sign on footpath advising "Slow Zone" with a snail image.  

Its amazing how many people meander along these paths - but they are a shared zone and there are also a lot of people who zoom along these paths on bikes (and even more horrifyingly, e-scooters and e-bikes) so there is a requirement to remind people to be considerate - this is near the playground, so even more so!

 

Image of very aged concrete with very little insects!!

I am not sure if you can see it, but in the crack in the driveway concrete there are several gazillion ants moving to higher ground with their eggs - a flood is coming!

 

Red grapefruit tree laden with green fruit (and a very lush lawn requiring attention_ 

The grapefruit tree (and the orange and the lemon) are all abundant with fruit this season - we are hoping that a few ripen before we leave, but that is in the hands of the real estate gods come 5th Feburary.

 

2 images of a garden bed planted with petunias, celosias and snapdragons and hemmed by bricks and concrete  

These photos were taken 2 weeks apart - the main difference being the effects of a pressure wash - I am hoping that those flowers get a go ahead soon but they are starting to put together a bit more colour.

 

4 panel cartoon - adult asks "How was school today Nelson?"  Nelson replies "A mean kid asked if I was a nerd."  Adult: "What did you say to him?"  Nelson: "I said I preferred the term 'Smarter than You'".  Attaboy.

 

Enjoy your Sunday folks!

 

On my list today is painting, packing boxes, taxiing the teenager, lawn-mowing and wondering what is for dinner - oh, and then making it, I suppose. 

 

(Apologies for the layout - blogger is having a tantrum!) 

Come Walk With Me

 I got up at stupid o'clock this morning - which was a half hour after I awoke.

I read blogs.  Many of you are cold.  Some of you are unwell.

So I thought that I would take you on a morning walk with me - through a corner of "Paradise".

Walk commenced at 5:05am...

 

This is the footpath from my place towards the Pacific Ocean. We were a bit unlucky this morning, as there are no roos here - normally there is a mob or two.

Turning right at my next street, this is my view towards my left (East) - the "Avenue of Pines" we will walk back past later. 

 Further along, this rock wall is built in the style of the walls that were built by South Sea Islanders in the late 1800s.   Unfortunately this region's sugar history includes usage of indentured labourers.

At the end of this street a large left loop takes me down to the beach for the walk back home. 

 

This "Turtle Tracks" playground was a bit of a hangout when both of my girls were little (I blogged about it in 2008!!) although it has had a few coats of paint to freshen it up over the years!

"This Avenue of Pines" reads the plaque "was donated by Mr and Mrs C Langbecker, in memory of their daughter and son-in-law, Mary and Charles Zunker, who lost their lives in a tragic cane fire in November 1953."

 

This is a small enough community that everyone knows someone who has been connected with this family.   

 

 

if you went straight ahead here, you would go past the headland where I married V and on to the public beach - but its only a short walk today (and I have spent a lot of time on the 45 photos that I took that blogger told me was too many) so we are instead turning left and going home.

Time to go to work.

(although I wrote this in the evening after, so actually time to go to bed)