I've been meaning to tell you about the car for a while and in fact asked Toby two weeks ago to take a photograph of the two of us but somehow we didn't get around to doing it so you'll have to make do with a photo her previous owner, Linda, sent to me:
As you can see she's a lovely little three-door Mitsubishi Mirage, born in 1998, which is a modest age for a car. She's just the right size to run me around the coast pretty quickly and is so much nicer than the bus, although not necessarily more comfortable; my sciatica copes better with an upright position on the bus than the car seat position and associated leg work. But I'm working on that too, and my dodgy shoulder which has plagued me for years, with a comprehensive remedial exercise program in the gym. I'll be right as rain again in no time. We even took a trip to Brisbane, the big city, together at the weekend with Lucie and, thanks to our inability to get to anywhere we wanted to go without going to a few other places on the way, we got to see a fair amount of the city known as Brisvegas, or just Vegas as Aussies love to shorten everything... even names they've nicked from elsewhere.
So, that's the car. Nice colour, don't you think?
Now, the house. You have no idea how happy Toby and I are to no longer be homeless. We move to our new home a fortnight today, and here it is:
It's a lovely, medium-sized three bedroom house, which is actually quite large for us, with a double garage, en-suite, walk-in robe, decent sized garden, two living areas and lots of cute little features, such as a spa bath, a covered outdoor area (to fox those damned mozzies), an in-ground sprinkler system connected to bore water (that's water that comes from under the ground and smells like rotten eggs, which basically means we can continue to water our garden in a drought but the house is in an area of high rainfall anyway so we may never have to use it, which is good because I hate the smell of rotten eggs), a vacu-maid system (some weird sci-fi thing they use in hotels, where you plug a tube into a wall and it automatically vacuums stuff up for you, or something), a walk-in pantry/larder with light (my favourite thing after the walk-in robe, I think) and a wood fire - very useful in winter as it's quite a cool house.
More photos at OurHouse.
Actually, being homeless hasn't been as bad as I thought. It's more of an irritation than anything else really. I think being homeless and unemployed would be a bummer but it's not too bad when you're employed. The extra rent we've been paying for the convenience of a short-term rental is helping us get used to not having some of that extra money we'll be paying towards our mortgage, and we haven't had to deal with bills etc. The first couple of weeks we spent staying with friends until our short-term rental was available. That was fun, but a bit more stressful as we didn't feel like we had our own space, and no doubt our friends felt the same, plus they live quite a way from where I work and so does everyone else it seemed, which made my drive to work long and at times stressful as I sat in traffic moving about 2kph in first gear. Our friends had their house on the market so the place had to be kept spotless most of the time. Most of my clothes were in boxes which kept getting moved into the garage, which couldn't have been further from the room we were staying in. When I found myself traipsing to the garage one morning to get some knickers to wear, I knew things had reached a new low. All in all, it's been fun getting to know new areas but I can't wait to settle into our own place. And get a cat. Then my life will be complete. Until I think of something else I want. Like a widescreen plasma TV. Or a new light-weight aluminium hybrid bike.
Do you know what the best thing is? Until we come to rent our house out, if indeed we ever do, I don't have to deal with another rental real estate agent ever again!!! You don't know how happy that makes me.
And last, but by no means least, my beautiful niece. Born at 4.10am BST on Wednesday 3rd October, vastly overdue and a little chubber (8lb 15.5oz!) as a result, she was named Lucy Grace. Or Lucy-lu as I have dubbed her. Clare has gone one step further and started calling her Lulu. She's also known as "sick machine" as she has a very upset tummy and has perfected the art of projectile vomiting, something which may come in handy in eighteen years when she goes to university.
I think of all my new things I'm especially pleased with my niece and can't wait to get back to England so I can play with her properly. I'm very proud of my clever little sister, Clare, who seems to be settling quite well into motherhood and is obviously "stoked" with her lovely daughter. Well done, and congratulations to Clare and Alan. Can't wait to catch up with you both in person.
Now, to wrap it all up I'd like to share with you an interesting photograph and story I read today, of a man who crashed his aeroplane and managed to destroy the entire cockpit except for the bit he was sitting in - fortunately. Amazingly, he came away with only a few broken bones.
For the full story see The Age: Please remain seated for landing
