After a rather lengthy absence, I’m back with some doors I photographed at a local Tiny Homes Expo last weekend. If you’re interested in checking out the bigger picture, I’ve written a more comprehensive post: HERE.
This might’ve been the back of a bathroom door, which bowled me over with rustic charm and intriguing timber.
Although I’ve been on numerous doorscursions in my time, these door captures are incidental as I was more concerned about maximising space in tiny homes and clever multi-purpose design ideas. There wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before in that department and certainly no magic wand for accommodating a life time of book hoarding and a rather extensive tea cup collection. However, they were incredibly stylish and I must admit my mood plummeted when I arrived home. There’s not one part of our house that doesn’t require extensive work of some kind. However, the expo was also inspirational and by chipping away I won’t be able to turn this place into my dream home, but at least I’ll be content. (BTW the possibility of hosting Christmas here is also firing me into action.)
Although we weren’t focusing on doors, there was one door which really stood out and that was manufactured by Golden Domes. I don’t think I was actually on display at the expo but people were raving about their “Hobbit Door” and the photos come from their website. That would be so cool having that as your front door, don’t you think?!!
Front DoorBack Door…Would you fancy a bath here? Sliding DoorsNo Doors. Understandably, few interior doors was a feature of many of these tiny homes, and although it’s hard to pick up from the photo, this is a loft bedroom from memory up a set of stairs.
Although I’m here to talk about doors, I have a little confession to make. Geoff and I actually bought a new bed with all the bells and whistles and it is becoming our luxurious oasis. What with massage features and being able move your head and feet up and down electronically, it’s bliss. However, there is a pitfall for the perfectionistically pedantic and that is trying to get your bed in the absolutely perfect spot. You could keep moving those buttons up and down searching for nirvana for eternity and never be satisfied if you weren’t careful. That’s why I’m glad I’m a near-enough is good enough sort. Perfection is a curse.
Storage under the stairs and a few doors
Speaking of bed, I’d better head off. I hope you’re all going well.
Thursday Doors is hosted by Dan Antion over at No Facilities. Please come over and join us. You’ll be surprised what you can learn and how much pleasure you can experience simply by checking out a few doors.
Transformed to he realms of Alice in Wonderland, the illustrious Bilbo Baggins or even Gulliver’s Travels; Geoff and I arrived at the Tiny Home Expo in Tuggerah about an hour’s drive away from home. We were greeted by an array of tiny homes and exciting possibilities if only we could shift all the crap in the backyard and find enough room for a tiny home. Being close to the beach, we could also generate serious income or house a teenager out there and it would be much cheaper than knocking down and rebuilding the house.
However, that wasn’t why we were there.
Stairway to Heaven?Game for a bath?Perfect Couch.
Rather, as you may recall if you have a very good memory and pay close attention to my posts, I completed a course in freelance journalism recently and I wrote one of my assessments on what it takes to fit inside a tiny home and how they work. As I’m sure you can appreciate, there are a few principles involved with maximising space in these seemingly tiny spaces where you can’t even swing the proverbial cat. So, after reading and writing about these tiny homes, I was busting to really explore every nook and cranny, understand more about the construction process and why anybody would want to go small when most of us would freely admit “bigger is better”.
A Tiny Home On Wheels
The first thing I have to say about these tiny homes is they are sweet.
The second thing I’ll say is that they are rather expensive.
Even a quick look at the styling inside many of these homes tells you they’re geared towards the top end of town not someone down on their luck. Indeed, perhaps the idea is that when you go small you can afford those extra luxuries. They’re a completely different story to the shack my grandfather-in-law used to take tin mining on the backblocks of Tasmania. They have toilets, showers, washing machines, microwaves, flat screen TVs and you guessed it. They even have a kitchen sink. Oops, I also forgot to mention they have beds and I’ll get to more of that later.
CouchBathroom with washing machine.Kitchen looking towards the bathroomCupboards in stairs to maximise space.
Yet, more affordable options were available and I was particularly drawn to a Golden Dome. I forget how big the demonstration dome was and it was so relaxing with a beautiful bed and stunning accessories. I could just see our “kids” really enjoying it. Indeed, we could even afford a smaller version and somehow fit it into our backyard, although there are the dogs and random boats and kayaks to consider. Indeed, I would love to escape into one of these and read and write all day. How lush! Mind you I could also do that at the beach which is just down the road too but for some reason I don’t.
How good is this bed?!! I swear I’d never get up!
Despite all that temptation, somehow we walked away empty handed and perhaps it’s a good thing my husband is more cautious or we might’ve had a few tiny homes crammed into our backyard like sardines with the dogs stuck up on the roof.
The funny thing is that although we went to look at tiny homes, we actually came home with a new bed. Not any new bed either. We bought a dream bed which comes with all the bells and whistles…massage, goes up and down, the works. The only thing it doesn’t do is provide breakfast in bed but hey that’s what we have teenagers for, isn’t it?!!
Anyway, I hope you enjoy some of the pics, which weren’t taken under studio conditions. Goodness knows how many people had tried out the beds by the time I came along. and it’s pretty hard to get a bit of distance in a tiny home to get it all in especially with loads of people coming and going. However, they do look at least a little lived in despite being on display.
Who’s Been Sleeping In My Bed?
Lastly, it was rough returning home yesterday. Naturally, there are no photos provided but I’ll let your imaginations do the work and picture goodness knows what is piled up on the couch.
Meanwhile, we’re dreaming of the day we can afford a block of land with our own tiny somewhere and our perfect escape hatch.
Do you have any experiences of tiny homes? Do you think you could live in one? I’d love to hear from you!
Best wishes,
Rowena
PS After writing my observations, I read the catalogue and it focuses more on the housing shortage, the need for more affordable homes. Indeed, there’s plenty of scope for those on a beer budget as well as the chardonnay set. Tiny homes are also a great option for those living in flood or bushfire prone areas. I’ll get back to that.
This weekend, I’m afraid I can only offer you some hypothetical pavlova. I was meant to make a pavlova for my son to take to Venturers tomorrow night and I forgot. Well, I thinking I’d probably make it tomorrow anyway, but I had actually forgotten about it. Or, perhaps that was just wishful thinking. Last week was so incredibly stressful, that I’ve gone splat over the weekend and not done much at all except recover.
Last Friday night was the first of three dance concerts our daughter will be performing in over ten days. I know that sounds a bit insane. However, due to the never-ending four month Sydney lockdown, production kept getting deferred until the first performance last Friday night and a second performance coming up on Wednesday night. The annual dance concert will be held on Sunday night. Then, we will have this event called Christmas, which is actually very important to me both spiritually and in terms of catching up with my huge extended family. However, every year it just seems to get more exhausting with me wondering are we actually going to get there? Or, are be going to break down somewhere in between?
At least, we’re not hosting this year and aren’t madly shifting furniture, ripping up carpet, laying down floorboards and painting the room. Yes, we did get the order wrong and had to be mighty careful with the painting. However, we learned for next time, which is why the next room hasn’t been touched.
A selfie taken beside the lifesaver’s flag. i am dreadfully short-sighted and always park myself at flag I go swimming so I can find my way back.
Last week, I think I mentioned that the weather’s been really lousy and we’ve had a lot of rain over the last couple of weeks. Well, we actually had a couple of days of brilliant sunshine and yours truly actually made it done to the beach and went for a swim. I also just sat on the beach and soaked up the sunshine and almost felt a wave of electricity flow through me. It was bliss! We only live about a ten minute walk from the beach, but I don’t get there as often as I should.
While sharing photos of my daughter and I, I thought I’d post this one taken of us in our new pyjamas at Peter Alexander. They were having a Black Friday saleich extended to Monday. I also bought a magical pair of red sequin Dorothy slippers, although instead of tapping them together and going home, I want to travel overseas. I’d love to be a free spirit like that at least in theory. However, having lived in the same house for twenty years now, that would seem to suggest I like bedrock stability instead.
Well, I think that’s all I’m going to share for now. It’s really late.
So, how has your week been? I’d love to hear from you in comments!
Meanwhile, you might like to join us over at the Weekend Coffee Share, which is hosted by Natalie the Explorer https://natalietheexplorer.home.blog/
“There are times when wisdom cannot be found in the chambers of parliament or the halls of academia but at the unpretentious setting of the kitchen table.” ― E.A. Bucchianeri
Don’t know how it is round at your place, but getting anything done around here is a very long and winding road that makes mission impossible look quick and easy. So, any successes need to be celebrated with the full brass band out in force and waving the flags. We did it! Yesterday, we finished restoring our new to us but anything but new outdoor table.
While restoring the table has been a journey, just getting it here has been a story in itself. My friend Roland found the table “beside the road*”. When I saw it in his lounge room, I was filled with envy. Damn! Why didn’t I find it? Well, to be honest, even if I’d found it, I wouldn’t have been able to shift it unless it was just down the road and the kids actually lifted a finger to help. Geoff, I’m afraid wouldn’t not have aided and abetted bringing any more tables home. We already have enough tables!! However, as it turned out, Roland had second thoughts, and decided it was too big. Before he could offload it to the opportunity shop, I stuck my hand up, and it was all mine. He even stuck a post-it note on it with my name on it. So there could be no challenges to my precious piece of real estate.
There was just one problem.
Well, there was more than one problem.
There usually is around here, which is why getting anything done is such an arduous, circular process.
The Table Arrives in the Dark of Night.
Firstly, the table needed transport, and unfortunately not being related to Enid Blyton’s Magic Wishing Chair, it wasn’t going to sprout wings and magically fly down the mountain to our place. It needed Geoff, and that required more than a confession. Serious negotiation was required. You see, there was already a table and a fish tank out where the intended table was meant to be going. The fish tank has been sitting here waiting to make to next step of it’s future life after it started leaking something like five years ago, and the existing table was falling apart and we’d bought the wood to replace the top. However, nothing had happened and Geoff has been painting the house, replacing the guttering, and anything but idle. I decided that table could go out the back. I didn’t care where the blessed fish tank went as long as it was gone. I didn’t care where the lot went. I wanted my new table out the front so I could have friends over outside once this wretched lockdown eased, and actually start getting social again within the safety of home. After all, we’ve not been in lockdown for 106 days and Monday is Freedom Day. I want to be a part of it.
Sometimes, hints are broad suggestions aren’t enough. Roland was wanting to clear his garage and I desperately wanted to table here, and measuring tape or no measuring tape, Geoff found himself making room for the table, and driving up the hill to pick it up. I don’t play the “Happy Wife, Happy Life” card often, but by now I was in make it happen mode. He had no choice but to capitulate and assist.
“To share a table with someone is to share everything.” ― Paul Krueger, Steel Crow Saga
However, there was just one small complication with the table. It was more of an indoor table than an outdoor table, and aside from needing protection, he top needed sanding. In other words, the table was “a project”. What’s more, the rest of the family was quick to extricate themselves and call it “YOUR project”. Geoff fetched the orbital sander from the garage and with my arms vibrating and my head buzzing, I started rowing backwards and forwards giving my arms quite a workout, which proved quite a shock to the system in itself. Seeing me with a power tool in hand must’ve been like an apparition too. Rowena the Writer is a far cry from Bob the Builder and his mates.
This could be the raised hand of a drowning woman as the sanding continues…
After beavering away for a veritable eternity with the orbital sander, the scratches were definitely winning. Moreover, these scratches giving have that worn-in distressed look that people go out of their way to age their furniture. The table looked like the scene of a cat fight with random scratches all over the place, and the annoying perfectionist in me was starting to picture our guests sitting at the table and counting all the scratches and thinking about how awful we were. I did try saying they’d be much more interested in the dessert and conversation, and wouldn’t care but I knew better. I asked Geoff for stronger sandpaper, and at this point he finally realized I wasn’t wanting to do a superficial sand, but more of a reconstructive face lift. I wanted to strip this baby right back to bare wood, even if it meant losing loads of personality. It could regain character in time.
the lingering mystery square, which looks like a UFO flying across one end of the table.
Now, the belt sander came out, and it was incredibly satisfying to see all those scratches evaporate in clouds of dust.
“The oldest form of theater is the dinner table. It’s got five or six people, new show every night, same players. Good ensemble; the people have worked together a lot.”
Michael J. Fox]
“Here’s yet a spot,” she cries, desperately rubbing. “Here’s the small of blood still.” This spot isn’t going anywhere either.
I don’t think I’ve actually mentioned that the table top is oak. It has a beautiful grain, and when I finally came to apply the decking oil, the wood just shone. It looked amazing. Although it was “your project”, Geoff ended up sanding and painting the legs. By then, my arms had had it. I’m much more in favour of teamwork than being a lone ranger – especially when I’m the one needing assistance.
I know you can’t be too demanding about a free table that was left out beside the road, but what possessed someone to sandpaper so ferociously against the grain? Thanks to the belt sander and yours truly, all gone!
The table was finally finished yesterday and moved into position. It looks amazing. I cooked up a big lamb roast with all the trimmings to celebrate last night, but it was cold and dark by the time it was really so we still haven’t christened the table yet. Moreover, I’ve been tapping away in here in my pyjamas with the dog on my lap ignoring the outside world, which is so bright and sunny. Geoff has gone sailing.Our daughter is doing her final dance class in the kitchen and for dinner or worse our world here in Greater Sydney is about to open up.
This is actually my second coffee share post this week, and while it’s too late for the blogshare, I wrote a post from my new blog: Tea With Ethel Turner, which got up in time. However, I still decided to put this together because so much is going on. At least, it seemed that way, but perhaps that’s only because not much has happened for so long what with being in lockdown for the last three months.
Well, the big news is that our NSW State Premier who is simply known as “Gladys” resigned after being hit with corruption charges by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). The irony is that the public and the media have almost unanimously come out in support of Gladys and feel ICAC’s timing stinks. We’re due to start coming out of lockdown on 11th October. Covid cases have dropped back own again which is encouraging, but Gladys has been our fearless warrior woman defending us from covid and trying to keep the economy going. Like Victoria’s Premier Daniel Andrews, she’s been giving a 11.00am daily update until about a week or two ago. I didn’t watch these very often, but they were repeated throughout the day and on the nightly news and they brought calm and stability during very tempestuous and uncertain times. Now, Gladys has gone and the Deputy decided to go as well. He’s had enough and is leaving politics. I think someone else has also left, resulting in three by-elections. Goodness knows what’s going to happen now without Gladys to keep covid out. I might be weird, but I already miss her. Gladys, don’t leave us!
Yesterday, Geoff and I went out in the kayaks. I’m not sure whether I’d go so far as saying we went kayaking, because we were test driving how I went in the red fibreglass kayak instead of the much heavier, cumbersome yellow bathtub. It went okay. It felt a lot more unstable and I almost had that sense you have when you’re first earning to ride a bike. I had to be very conscious and focused on what I was doing or I felt I’d lose my balance and end up tipping over. However, tipping over was very unlikely much of the time, and getting beached posed a much greater threat. It was low tide and we headed inland which was more like a wetland or swamp and there was only a depth of about 30 centimetres. We knew a friend of ours was also out kayaking and we eventually caught up with him and a friend. It was so exciting to see him. This normal thing of seeing friends, bumping into friends has become so precious after being in lockdown for 14 weeks now, you’re soon doing the happy dance (which isn’t such a good idea when you have lousy balance and your in a kayak).
The yellow bathtub
Meanwhile, the preparations for Freedom Day are starting to get under way at our place. Freedom Day is scheduled for Monday 11th October. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure what so called freedoms we’ll be getting then, and it doesn’t really apply to vulnerable people like myself, because we have to stay on guard and if anything, be more cautious about who we hang out with. However, I think it allows me to go down to Sydney to see my Mum and Dad and that’s at the top of my out of jail bucket list.
Anyway, as I said, we’ve been doing some work around the house in preparation for being able to have people over here again. Geoff has painted much of the house, although we still have to get onto the front door. I was initially wanting to repair the table out the front, which has also been storing a large fish tank so we couldn’t use the table. A friend of mine had found a lovely old table beside the road and I’d fallen in love with it, and he was thinking it was too big for his room and he might get rid of it. Well, naturally I quickly put up my hand. However, we already have a few excess table inside the house, and I was trying to find the right time to mention the new addition to Geoff. A table is a very difficult thing to hide, especially when I needed him to pick it up! Meanwhile, my friend was starting to lose patience with the delays. I was getting frustrated with the delays. I could be sitting out the front in the sun reading instead of being stuck inside. I needed a reading nook. I needed somewhere covid friendly for friends to chat.
Picking up the table.
Well, we have now picked up the table, and today I started sanding the top back and I’ll finish it off tomorrow and also paint the legs.
Going against the grain like this, these scratches had to go.
It’s been an interesting process sanding back the table top. While some people deliberately destress their furniture, the table had some nasty scratches which looked like a cat had gone crazy. In another patch was very badly scratched after goodness knows what idiot madly tried sandpapering the varnish off working against the grain. These scratches didn’t add character and while I’d never be sitting at a friend’s place chatting and eating dessert and counting the number of scratches on their table, the thought did cross my mind. It’s probably that same part of my brain which frets about “red pen” (a writer’s nemesis) and having one comma out of place in a published work. Yes, I know. I need to go and get a life. Believe me, I would if I could. So, after using the orbital sander for the best part of 3-5 hours and still having scratches, but now having patches of light appearing through the immovable dark (the table is made of oak and had been vanished). I couldn’t see how I could get get the surface to a point of equilibrium. To a point where it didn’t look like I’d tried really really hard to get it right but had clearly given up and thrown in the towel. I asked Geoff if we could apply some varnish stripper to clean it up a bit. IT’s only at this point that he brings out the belt sander, which was clearly the right tool for the job and in minutes sawdust and varnish were flying and the table top was as smooth as a baby’s bot. Well, it will be when I’m done. The battery had gone flat and it was getting late. We didn’t want to disturb the neighbours.
A rare sighting of Rowie using power tools.
However, it’s now looking like I’ve become one of those fusspots who are never satisfied. As all that dark varnish disintegrated before my eyes and those immovable scratches were pulverised into sawdust, the tabletop started to look rather plain and devoid of character. It looked like it had had it’s personality removed, and that somehow even those very scratches which grated on me like fingernails scraping down a chalkboard, gave give it character. The table now had a perfect face, but it almost appeared unnatural. Or, at least it will when I finish it off tomorrow.
Anyway, with the way things are around here, it won’t take it long to get knocked around a bit. This house is the personification of “Misrule”.
Well, on that note, I’d better head off. I don’t think I’ve actually asked you much about how you’re doing and what madness is going on in your neck of the woods.
Meanwhile, you might like to join us over at the Weekend Coffee Share, which is hosted by Natalie the Explorer https://natalietheexplorer.home.blog/
Welcome to Another Weekend Coffee Share & Happy New Year!
That said, I think it’s a bit early to declare 2021 a Happy New Year just yet. However, perhaps if we speak positive words over the coming year, it might just come to pass. Not that 2020 was a particularly “bad” year for us. However, we have had some absolute shockers in the past, so it had some pretty stiff competition. Also, Australia has largely managed to contain covid, and we haven’t experienced the terrible suffering and numbers of deaths seen overseas. However, that’s also because we’ve been cautious and established tight preventative measures often at a voluntary level. We’ve seen what the virus has done overseas and we don’t want to catch it. I particularly don’t want to catch it due to my severe pre-existing medical conditions. That’s just logical and if I have to delay some gratification for a bit, such is life. I’ll do it. I won’t complain and I’ll make the best of it. Indeed, that’s what I’ve done and my WWI research is powering along, and we’ve also made great headway with renovating our loungeroom and clearing alot of stuff out of the house.
The renovated loungeroom.
So, we start 2021 with new beginnings. We’re opening up our home, and inviting people over instead of locking the doors and barring the windows and hoping no one ever dares to pop in and knock on the door. We had my parents over for Christmas Day, and with covid restrictions down to 5 visitors, we had four friends over for dinner and after midnight, there was a change of the guard and our daughter had two friends stay the night. She hasn’t brought these friends over before so this was a big step forward. We’d rather she brings her friends here rather than hanging out locally. I’m sure I don’t need to explain that to anyone out there.
Trying on glasses at Specsavers wearing masks…our brave new world.
Another new beginning for 2021, is that I’ve gone back to extensive journal writing. My journaling has taken on different forms throughout the years. Traditionally, I’ve just used a free form notebook. However, for awhile there, I’ve gone to printed diaries with a day to a page, and on other years, a week to an opening. I use my diary writing as a mixture of recording what happened as well as exploring how I feel about things, and it seems quite a lot of storytelling. For awhile there, I’ve been fine with just doing my online blogging and haven’t felt a need for a private space. However, that changed towards the end of last year, when I started becoming more aware that there was stuff I just wanted to share with myself. I didn’t want someone else’s response , opinion or suggestions. I just wanted to sit with myself in this still pond of thought and just be, although being a writer, of course, that involved shedding lots of words, letting the emotions flow. These days, I don’t feel the need to share these feelings publicly or even to one soul. I’m quite happy to let life bounce along on the outside and leave it be. Besides, other people generally don’t have the time to listen to the whole story, especially when the story takes days to tell. You’d be needing to have toilet breaks, nap and meal breaks or a supply of ultra-strong, intravenous coffee.
Anyway, as it turns out, even I don’t have time to listen to myself. I’ve been writing in my new journal for hours some days, and providing pages and pages of back story going back 20 years to when we first bought the house, and why our renovation plans were so badly scuttled. Life is complicated. Complicated isn’t quick. Well, that’s unless you go for the bullet journal approach, which could be rather brutal when things aren’t going in your favour and you’ve travelled down snake after snake without landing on any ladders.
There’s also another reason I’ve been reflective lately. My great aunt, Louise, passed away on New Year’s Day. She was such a wonderful woman, and I regretted not keeping in touch more. I regret not having the self-confidence to just ring up and say hello. I have no trouble talking to strangers and yet feel nervous calling people I know. Silly, isn’t it!!
My grandmother second from the right with her siblings at the Glasshouse Mountains, Queensland around 1940.
Anyway, her death triggered a search through the old photo albums, and by the end of the night, I was feeling quite upset. I won’t use the word depressed, because what I was experiencing was grief. Not only that my aunt had died, but how that whole generation had now passed away, and along with them a way of life and big sprawling families with lots of cousins and connections. I was particularly close to my grandparents, and I missed them all over again too. That’s not to say that looking up the photos was a mistake or a bad thing to do. It just acknowledges that I’m human, not a robot. When we love someone, it’s natural to grieve. It’s naturally to think of the bigger family picture they were part of and miss that too. It’s also a reminder to make the most of the living and stay connected, particularly at the moment when we’re much more disconnected during covid.
1919 Spanish Flu Outbreak, Sydney.
Meanwhile, I’d like to encourage you to check out my previous post. I found a letter to the editor from 1919 talking about lifestyle restrictions in Sydney during the 1919 Spanish Flu Pandemic. It was a great piece, and way too relevant to us now.
Well, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve popped by for coffee. Of course, I’m full of excuses and, of course, they’re all very compelling. Top of the list, is the house situation. We’re having my parents over for Christmas lunch, which has somehow necessitated a major renovation of our house in just a few weeks. Fortunately, my husband Geoff has been working from home much of this year, or it wouldn’t have been possible. Not that he’s been renovating on the job. It’s just that he hasn’t been commuting around 2 hours each way to work, and is actually alive at the end of the day.
Geoff cutting up the old carpet. Good riddens, at last!
We’ve actually been trying to launch this reno project for the last six months. The floor boards have been waiting in the garage for us to find someway of magically caterpulting the old piano out the front door. In the end, it turned out to be a classic case of “divide and conquer”. We couldn’t give the piano away as a whole, but it ended up leaving the house in pieces. We’ve kept the keys and pedals, and our friend loaded up the rest on his trailer and disappeared into the sunset. Well, it hasn’t entirely disappeared and a friend did mention something about seeing piano parts outside his place. It does sound a bit suss.
Deconstruction in progress….
As any of you who have renovated will agree, one thing leads to another. Once we moved out the furniture and got the new floor down, it became pretty clear a wall needed painting and then the room. I wasn’t much chop on the painting front, and so I drifted out into what really should be known as the “dump room”, and steadily started making progress and soon I found myself swept up in a whirlwind. Or, more to the point, hundreds of books found themselves caught up in the whirlwind and swept out the door to the charity shop. I decided I’d disposed of enough books to send an entire bookshelf packing, enabling us to turn the dump room into a retreat and we’ll be moving a couch out there tomorrow.
While it’s very satisfying to be on such a roll, with three days to Christmas, it’s hard to know quite when to call it a day and start shoving everything back in, not pulling more of it out. Yet, I’m planning to drop another load off to the charity shop tomorrow and the car’s not full yet. What else can go? What else can I turf and release that bit more space? It’s a sort of mania once it gets hold of you, but while we need to get the house as clean and spacious as possible, we also need to cook and cooking requires ingredients. Yikes, how does a simple lunch become so complicated? I’m sure if Jesus was in charge, he’d just tell me to make them all Vegemite sandwiches and be done with it. Keep it simple, Stupid.
Anyway, what else has been going on?
Well, we were relaxed. Being part of Great Sydney, we watched Melbourne go into lock down and we were just a little superior about it. After all, we always knew Sydney was better than Melbourne. However, Melbourne’s got it’s revenge. Covid’s back with a vengeance with a cluster generated out of Avalon just down from Palm Beach. This general area known as “the Northern Beaches” is now in lock down and people will be doing Christmas at home, potentially alone. It’s pretty tough, especially when people do so much to prepare for the big day, and I know I’ll really be spewing if my parents can’t come up. Christmas is Christmas. It is more than sacred.
How is Christmas looking in your neck of the woods? Are you catching up with family or friends? Or, are you playing it safe, or possibly in lock down. It’s rough when Christmas gets cancelled. I think even the great Scrooge would complain about that.
Anyway, I’d like to wish you are yours a Merry and blessed Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year.
We’ve all seen some weird things in 2020. However, things have really gone mad around here now. Indeed, even madder than usual, if that were possible. As you can see, I’ve starting cooking the books, and we’ll be eating words for Christmas.
Well, we will be unless our renovations and reorganizations get a wriggle on.
Indeed, being typical renovators, we’ve taken two steps forward, three steps back, on the hope that we’ll have a place for everything and everything in it’s place by Christmas Day. This hope is now starting to look like a fantastic dream, and I should be a lot more worried than I am. However, I’ve had good training. You can always hide a few things in the oven, the clothes dryer or under the bed at the last minute if you have to. Failing that, there’s the car.
The car bed finally leaving the house.
Of course, the road to renovation didn’t start 5 days before Christmas. Rather, the wheels were set in motion a few months ago when our son’s car bed finally left the house for an extended holiday at a friend’s place.
There’s a bear in there, and a piano frame as well…
Yet, there was still the problem of the old piano no one wanted in the loungeroom. However, it turned out that deconstructing the piano solved that problem and a friend of ours was quite happy to take it away in pieces, although we have kept the pedals and the keys. Then, it was full steam ahead, which also included an incidental painting of the room.
Geoff finally cutting through the carpet.
While Geoff was busy there, I started getting quite ruthless with the books and realized we probably needed to halve the number of books in our place. Well, that’s if we were ever going to be able to have people over once again. In other words, be able to open the place back up again, and not be afraid of somebody coming over.
Indeed, it’s been all too easy to forget we used to have people over, including holding the kids’ birthday parties. Whatever happened to us?
It’s called dermatomyositis an auto-immune disease where you’re muscles attack themselves and it’s been compounded by Interstitial Lung Disease, which has left me with 50% lung capacity. We’ve been in survival mode for so long, but with Geoff working from home this year due to Covid, we’ve finally been able to get ahead. Indeed, we’ve even saved money. So, 2020 hasn’t been all bad.
Well, it’s actually because of Covid that the renovations had to get a wriggle on. Usually, we go to my aunt’s place every year for a big Christmas with the extended family. My dad is one of seven, so what with all my cousins and now their kids, it’s become quite a tribe. However, they’re not getting together this year, and so my parents are coming to our place, and there’ll only be the six of us. Indeed, with such a small group, I feel we need to include the three dogs in on the head count. Nine sounds a lot better!
Lady’s keen to join us at the dinner table for Christmas lunch.
This means, of course, that I’m needing to cook, and not just cook the books. However, that can wait at the moment. We have a ham in the fridge, and I’ve made a Christmas cake and there’s also a pudding. So, I’ve made a good start.
All these books ended up in the kitchen while we were moving furniture around. Our dump and run room is now in the process of being cleaned out, and we’ve swapped the lounge and the dining table over so we’ll have two tables for Christmas Day, while creating a potential place for our teenaged kids to hang out. Or, perhaps it will be for us parents when, and if, their friends ever come over. I’m really looking forward to this new chapter, and it feels quite liberating.
Yet, at the same time, we still need to find a place for everything and have everything stashed away in its place by Christmas Day.
What have we done????
How are your Christmas preparations going? I hope yours are a lot less chaotic, and your plans are going well. Yet, at the same time, there’s also Covid to consider and its intent on ruining quite a few Christmases this year. Nearby Sydney has a cluster on the Northern Beaches and they’ve gone into lock down, and I’ve hearing of a few cancelled plans. However, cancelled lunches is nothing compared to the incredible loss of life the virus has claimed on a global scale, and there will be a lot of empty chairs this Christmas Day, and a lot of heart-ache. We are thinking of you and sending our love!
As the saying goes “you can’t even give a piano away anymore”, especially when it’s over a hundred years old, out of tune, verging on decrepit, but with just enough life left to hope someone else might take it on. For the last five to ten years, we’ve been trying to give our piano away. Although we’ve had a few nibbles over the years, there have been no takers, and it just kept sitting here covered in picture frames, and an accumulation of household detritus and dust.
“Some people are aware of another sort of thinking which… leads to those simple ideas that are obvious only after they have been thought of… the term ‘lateral thinking’ has been coined to describe this other sort of thinking; ‘vertical thinking’ is used to denote the conventional logical process.”
However, as we found out, it’s all about the packaging. Or, perhaps I should say, how you package it. While no one wanted the entire piano, we finally managed to get our friend Neil interested in the parts. Indeed, he ended up towing most of the piano away in pieces over a few trips, and we were particularly excited to be able to keep the strings in tact, even if Geoff did have to saw through more than 10 centimetres of solid wood to pull it off. Neil’s already mounted the felts in his loungeroom where they’ve become an curious discussion point, and there are plans for a seat out of the wood. Meanwhile, I’m wondering how the birds and possums are going to respond to the ghostly sounds the keyless strings will be playing out in the bush until he works out what to do with it.
Yours truly photographed with the hammers extracted out of our piano. Neil’s cleverly mounted this on a wall. It’s intriguing.
Meanwhile, I have to tell you how much we enjoyed deconstructing this humble 100 year old piano. I know that sounds absolutely terrible, especially when I’m from a family of accomplished pianists. Indeed, it felt very much like a chainsaw massacre, especially after we found out much of it had been glued together, and the only way to get it apart, was to saw it to pieces.
However, ironically pulling it apart emphasized the beauty of its parts, which had become lost in the whole, especially once some of the keys weren’t working, and the cost of restoration was never going to pay off.
Indeed, it was quite incredible to appreciate just how much work, skill and attention to detail had gone into constructing the piano, and I guess we felt a bit sad that it had ended up being a useless lump of furniture and a burden. Indeed, it went further than that. The piano had actually become a significant roadblock, stopping us from renovating our loungeroom and getting it to a state where we’d be comfortable inviting friends over and dare I say it (drum roll) ENTERTAINING!!
So, I guess you won’t be surprised when I tell you that this situation with the piano has become a great analogy for explaining how to deal with a large persistent problem. Somehow, we need to find a way of carving it up into smaller components which will be much easier to deal with so we can clear the decks.
I also think our handling of the piano problem also shows how persistence can backfire. Sometimes, we need to stop persisting and give up. Stop putting up with a burden, problem, difficult person or situation and decide that “enough is enough”. It is going, going, gone!
Do you have any special memories of the piano? Or, perhaps you have a few horror stories instead. It’s a shame that the piano no longer holds it’s place at the heart of the family home with people gathered round to sing and play together; and also how it’s demise can also be attributed to the clutter Nazi’s who on’t let another gather dust. It is OUT!
Well, I guess I’d better ask all of you how you’re going first up and what’s happening around Covid 19 in your neck of the woods? You might need something stronger than a tea or coffee to get through that conversation. So, I’d better off you some chocolate. What do you prefer? We’ve acquired quite a stash in lock down. I’ve been doing the shopping online and snapping up chocolate on sale. It’s much tastier than toilet paper.
Quite frankly, I don’t know whether I’m Arthur or Martha at the moment. While I’m “creative” and not necessarily a great one for routine, I usually have the bare bones in place. Those activities which form a scaffolding and framework for the week and some sense of direction when you wake up in the morning. Indeed, you might actually wake up in the morning even the most chaotic and disorganized people and the freeist of free spirits have their anchor points. Indeed, I’m sure I had more structure when I was backpacking through Europe wandering like a cloud without a watch and no itinerary whatsoever, than living like this in Covid 19 lock down. What am I supposed to be doing? Where am I going?
Well, most of the time, the response to the latter is nowhere. Although I have been out for a few walks. This is what you term “exercise”, which sort of takes the buzz out of it to be honest, even if it does involve walking along our gorgeous beaches.
Oh, and before one of you remembers that I went down to Sydney to see my parents last weekend, I’ll stop being melodramatic, and express some gratitude for how well Australia’s getting through the coronacrisis and what a difference this has made to people like myself who are at high risk, and also to people with chronic or life-threatening conditions who depend on hospital beds. We’ve seen horrific scenes around the world but somehow we’ve been spared. It’s hard to understand, and I hope we have a handle on it now that restrictions are being lifted. It would be an absolute miracle.
Personally, I have to admit that the stress of having the coronavirus hanging round, particularly after having a few major asthma attacks during the Australian bush fire crisis and being locked away for a few months n the air-conditioned loungeroom, it’s a lot to deal with. The fact I’ve survived and got through without a scratch, seems to minimize the battle and it’s like it never happened. My house didn’t burn down. I didn’t lose the lot. Nobody died. No trips to hospital. However, what our family has been through wasn’t nothing, and we’re not the only ones fighting these invisible battles beneath the radar either. It’s very hard, because it takes so much energy and thought to speak out that your emotions become quite intense and if the person you open up to doesn’t at least acknowledge your experience, you just give up. You don’t try again. Rather, you become silent, even though you might still be talking and the words are still coming out and your face, all except for your eyes, are smiling. In so many ways this is dangerous territory, because you’re rapidly disconnecting not only with those around you, but also to much of your self. That’s something those of us who know somebody who is going through a bit, especially an invisible battle, need to keep in mind.
Anyway, restrictions are easing throughout Australia. Last Wednesday, our son returned to school for one day. That was quite interesting. When I asked him how it went, he mentioned the absolute silence. With so few students there, it was so quiet. He said that he could even hear the local trains going past, where usually he could only ever hear the horn. Our daughter hasn’t gone back to school yet. However, it looks like they’ll both be back to normal school hours next week. To be honest, that really freaks me out, and yet it’s perhaps a return to normal that we need, although I’m still concerned about them bringing home the virus and you just can’t presume that the kids will be okay themselves if they catch it. Meanwhile, having them home has felt like an extended holiday and it’s been great not having to drive them around. My son and I have been doing some cooking together and our daughter’s painted the back of her bedroom door cow pat, which looks really cool.
While some people have been Spring cleaning as their lock down activity, I’ve been writing but we’ve also been working on the house and yard and getting some renovations done. As you may recall, we bought a camper caravan for me to escape to if I need to quarantine from the family. It’s still parked out of the house, while Geoff sorted out the backyard, repair the garage roof and trimmed the bougainvillea before we could even start on restoring the camper. Then he won a few pallets of floorboards last weekend at an auction and now I’m slowly moving the china out of the cabinet and relocating it wround the house. I don’t know if you’ve quite been on the hunt for real estate like this trying to squeeze your treasures into every nook and cranny. My friend works in a giftware shop and she does this all the time, and has a few casualties along the way. So, far so good. The piano is also going to be dismantled and put out for council cleanup. It’s really crappy, but I’m hoping I might be able to salvage some of the bits to stick them up somewhere around the house. I also want to make a sculpture of my grandmother the concert pianist where the pedals could become her feet. I’m not sure about how I’d build the rest of her, but I have some brass cuckoo clocks up in the roof, which I also thought about incorporating into a sculpture. By the way, what with storing up all these components, you might actually get the idea that I can actually sculpt, when I’ve never made a sculpture before in my life. That said, i did buy some wire and glue to make these papermache figures. Anyway, needless to say our house is bursting at the seams from all my inspirational ideas.
Meanwhile, I’ve been getting back into blogging again. I did my first Friday Fictioneers post for quite while and I also wrote couple of poems which were inspired by Henri-Frederic’s: Journal Intime. I haven’t posted these as that limits what I can do with them. However, I did write a three part series reflecting back on our precious dog, Bilbo, who we lost three years ago. This wan’t soemthing I’d planned and to be perfectly honest, I woudl’ve opted for something more uplifting and funny at this point in time. However, there is humour in these posts as I reflect on Bilbo’s antics and I share about how we worked through our grief in perhaps some unconventional ways, which might help someone else get through their situation and perhaps feel less alone. I also want to leave these memories and reflections for our kids. They don’t pay much attention to Mum’s scribblings at the moment and I often feel I’m writing to myself when I really am often writing for them. That’s just the way it is and at least i have you friends out there who appreciate and encourage me in the present.
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Anyway, here’s a link to the first of these stories which talks about Bilbo’s diet: The Dog We’ll Never Forget
My apologies for scooting off. Time has just flown away and I need to get to bed before sunrise this morning.
This has been another contribution to the Weekend Coffee Share.
Beyond the Flow 