This week in the country

Last week on our day off we had breakfast at Forest Hill (thank you lady). My usual favourite dish of pancakes, bacon, maple syrup, cream and poached eggs. Yes, eggs. On the way back, we saw the view across the valley (for the 70 thousanth time) and yet again I tried to capture the big open space of the valley and the flat flat land. The sunflower paddock on this corner was almost wiped out by all the rain, but it was still a beautiful sight amongst the other crops. Everyone around grows different things and often its hard to identify whats in the paddock. Michael and I always like to surmise what it is growing and often dont find out till we see them harvesting it months later.

We went out to breakfast to fortify ourselves for the big move. I have been planning to sort out the study for weeks. The last time I tried, I went to move my scrapbooking table and it took a slow crash tumble to the floor, having a loosely locked leg. I left everything and walked out the door and did not go back for a week. I really wanted to change the space and we decided to go dramatic and move the whole room out and switch it with the spare bedroom. Kitty and Charlotte were very confused when they were finally allowed back inside.

It only took about half an hour to move everything. But it took 3 hours to clean it up into some type of order. The spare bed is now in the sunniest room of the house, perfect for winter visitors. If I had to leave Michael (ie if we had a fight and I had to move out) I would claim the spare room, it warms up all afternoon and is still pleasant at night.

One of the worst things about working long hours in winter is that I rarely see the sun. I see it going up or coming down, but mostly miss it altogether. Recently the angle of the sun setting has thrown the pink sunset light into my office and I rush outside to take photos. Here is one of my favourites recently. It is the sunset over the horse paddock with the 'Gone with the Wind' tree in the foreground.

It was my birthday this week. These are my very expensive new red birthday shoes. Martin keeps telling me 'theres no place like home, theres no place like home.' They are really very comfy shoes and I look forward to wearing them in Paris.

Michael made an executive decision to bring home one of the old side boards from work that they removed this week. He loaded it into the back of my car, and by the time he got home later that night I had changed the kitchen around and now we have a kitchen table and more prep space.

This is me and Michael on my birthday. I have a weird chin because he pulled on my hat as I took the picture. After my crap day, we enjoyed a great night at home in front of the fire, with Yahtzee, a cheese platter and Nasi Goreng. We also watched one of my new Jane Austen BBC DVD's that he bought me for my birthday, brave boy.

Kitty wars continue in our house. However on my birthday night, Kitty sat back and watched crazy Charlotte wrap herself up in our net laundry basket. It entertained her for an hour. I bet she was thinking 'yep, a few months ago, I was a young'n like you and I used to do that too. Silly habit really.'

Today I achieved notoriety at work, when I walked out of a wedding expo that we were supposed to exhibit at because we weren't given the booth that we had been sold. Well, they sold it to us but they didn't explain it the way we found it. Who ever heard of a stall that is smaller at the front than at the back? We had a 1 m frontage on the front porch of an old Queenslander. It was a joke really and I packed us up and moved us out just before it was due to open. The floor coordinator was even ashamed to be associated with it when I went to complain (and I was not the first). By the time lunch was over at work, word had got around that I had told the organiser to 'jam it up her ass'. Word travels fast in a small place, I only wish I'd had the courage to actually say that.