More visitors

This week I had several visitors. I had Nana, who saw our house for the first time, though she seems more familiar with my local area than Michael and I. I also had G.

Its been bit of a big few weeks really. Nana came to visit and has been staying with friends in Ipswich. I met her friends on her second day and they came for dinner at the hotel. I took Nan home that afternoon and we spent the afternoon watching the cows. She was overwhelmed to be in such a peaceful place, and I dont think she's ever come so close to a cow in her life.

We surmised whether the 'tank on legs' was pregnant or just fat. It seems a long time since all the other cows had calves.

When I brought it up with Peter, the Farmer the other day, I said "Our cows are terribly noisy at the moment." "Really?" (in typical Peter monotone). " Yes," I said, "I think there are a few pregnant ones"
"I should hope so, " he said "I hope there are about 400 pregnant ones."
"Oh," I said, (ignoring the fact that the 'tank on legs' is really obviously really pregnant). "How long are they pregnant for?"
"10 months" he said.

Hmm, if this is true then these poor 'housemates' of ours have one on the boob and another on the way. Poor single mothers. Our whole paddock must be a big single cow mothers support group.


The second visitor I had was G. We had had, as I said, a pretty hard week.

I decided it was time for a wine night at home. Our house is bit of an adventure for our friends. At first, we established the precedent by having the padlock on the gate, which meant that every visitor had to be let in and then locked out again. After the rains in Feb March and our padlocks (both of them - we are double locked due to the energy company who needs to read our meter) the padlocks both rusted. After that we no longer bothered, but friends still did not come. We stopped having events after G rolled the work 4WD car on our road after a BBQ dinner at our house in November.

Any way, G decided to come out and I had prepared dinner for us both. She was going to drive her car out, which was a major event as the $60000 car 'does not go off road'.

I was standing in the kitchen making spag bol while I wondered how she would get up the driveway in the dark as she had mentioned she would park at the gate and walk in. I kept thinking of the huge herd of cows that had been sitting in front of the house when I got home (like little dark islands with shiny eyes) and the poop that they has been created in the 3-4 weeks since we've had them back. I thought about G's nice shoes and the darkness and the poop. I did the right thing and picked her up from the gate in the car.

Its something I've never had to consider before - usually I just wash up or vaccum the couch or make sure there are no undies on the bathroom floor. I've never had to do 'gate transfers' before - as if we live on a grande estate with large luxurious gates.

Dinner went well by the way. I have not cooked for anyone else in such a long time that I had stage fright about spaghetti. It was topped off by a great bottle of Coriole Shiraz that our group GM insisted we try again because he did not like it very much and thought it mifght have something wrong with it. Ahh, the things we do for work.