Friday Fragments

Hosted by Mrs4444.

Friday fragment flit and flutter around in one's fogged up fancy, frustrating one's faculties and forcing a foundering of fullfilling fought thought! Sorry. All that alliteration almost absconded with my ability to articulate accurately. Ahem. I'll stop there and offload some of these pesky flittering fragments shall I?

Don't forget to visit other Friday Fragmenters via the blog hop links below!

*****

Cystitis sucks. 
It's also the reason there was no decluttering pics yesterday. I got home from canteen duty at the high school, went to the loo, thought "uh oh, that doesn't feel good" and within the hour was in agony. I dragged myself up to the shops for cranberry juice and Ural, and fortunately I had a stash of antibiotics in the medicine box from the last round of misery. So, although I spent Thursday afternoon and evening curled on the lounge feeling sorry for myself, by this morning I was well enough to head off for work. What a waste of half a day.

*****

So does bullying.
I'd just come home from picking Caitlin and Tom up from school on the way home from work today when I got an SMS from Dave saying simply "Can you pick me up?" It was still a good 15 minutes till his bus was due so I was a little surprised and concerned. I SMSed back "Yeah ok. Why?" and then rang him. He clearly didn't want to tell me over the phone why he wanted to be picked up but I guessed it might have been a problem with some other kids so I didn't press him and agreed to come get him. When he got in the car I asked "Want to tell me why I'm here?" Apparently he'd had some unpleasant interactions with a few kids in his class earlier in the week and had overheard them talking about catching the same bus as him this afternoon (they don't usually, but wanted to go somewhere that's on its route). He won't tell me what they said or did and doesn't want me to do anything about it but clearly it's been bad enough that he didn't feel able to cope with being on the same bus as them. Life is just really not fair sometimes.

*****

Tom wants to buy a Thermomix
I took the kids with me to a Thermomix demo tonight at Di and Bren's place. It's a pretty cool piece of equipment, but at almost $2000.00 I think I'll give it a miss. Tom got to help with cooking the last course of the 6 course demo - a custard. He was very taken with it and assured me that it would make cooking a lot easier, he even offered to donate the contents of his bank account towards the purchase price. I'll confess to being tempted by the vision of Tom doing all the cooking for the family in the Thermomix but I suspect the novelty would wear off all too soon.

*****

I've missed 2 days of decluttering
See, I was having such a nice time sitting around talking to friends tonight, and my kids were being so perfectly behaved, that I ended up leaving to come home at least an hour later than I had intended. So when I got home I had to choose between doing a quick declutter and writing a Friday Fragments post. I think I got my priorities right, don't you?

Quick hit: Church billboards make me sad.

I drove Caitlin to her ballet class this afternoon, on the way we pass one of the local churches and, as I find myself involuntarily doing every time, I read its notice board. Now, the things written on this notice board are often inane and sometimes illogical* but this one strikes me as being actually offensive.

"God allows what he hates to achieve what he loves."

I beg your pardon? The end justifies the means? All the suffering and hatred and evil and misery in our world is justified by the supposed fact that some people will believe in and worship God? I don't think so.

*There's a church in Hornsby for which I would add occasionally funny/clever, but this church's notice board has never made me so much as smile.

How to make door-knocking God-botherers run away.

Answer the door in your pjs and dressing gown with your hair doing its best Shepherd Book "Too much hair!" impression.

 Shepherd Book in the Firely episode Jaynestown.

They barely managed to hang around long enough to say "Home Bible study...?" before they bolted next door. I didn't even find out which variety they were!

I've started on the lounge room, I figure one corner at a time is the way to go. I'll try not to end up after the 4th corner with one huge pile of crap in the middle. That would be bad because then we wouldn't be able to see the TV from the lounge...

Corner the first.

Aka bookshelf of bountiful dust and mountain of things I've put aside to deal with later.

Later.

Unfortunately, most of the dust is still there.

In which my cats are very helpful

I think I said " Get OUT!" about a hundred times in the course of getting the pantry unjumbled.

Jack, offering to help declutter.

Samantha, laser-eyed defender of the pantry

The front hall

Tonight's effort focused on clearing up the prime dumping ground of the house. I must confess I haven't completely finished dealing with it yet as some of the detritus ended up on the kitchen table to be sorted through later and put away elsewhere. I guess that's what I'll be doing tomorrow.

Before:

After:

No wonder it ends up like it does. You walk in through the front door and there's all that empty flat space and you think "surely it can't hurt to put this stuff down there just for the moment?" and then before you know it you're piling things up into precarious mountains and can no longer find your keys or wallet even though you only put them down just 5 minutes ago.

Adam is making me tea, time for bed!

Sundays in my City

Hosted by Unknown Mami

After our busy furniture rearranging day yesterday we took it easy this morning and ended up having breakfast at about 11am. Dave and I went and did the grocery shopping while Adam, Tom and Caitlin baked choc chip cookies and brownies. Then after lunch (which we ate at 3:30pm) we put the Anglo Saxon style leg of lamb in the oven to slow cook and headed over to my Mum's place for a walk.

My Aunty Liz and Uncle Rob and my Dad had been at Mum's for lunch so altogether there were 10 of us (if you count the dog) wandering the neighbourhood.

Clara was keen to get moving, my arm is a good inch longer than before we went I'm sure.

Sulphur-crested cockatoo

Kookaburra

Me getting left behind because I keep stopping to take photos

Wattle in bloom

Adam taking a photo of me taking a photo of him...

I gave him the good camera, and nearly all the shots I'm using have come from my phone.

Oh look, there's me!

Here's what we'd come off-road to see. It's the pig face tree. One of my kids named it that years ago, I think it was David.

David, Clara, Mum and Aunty Liz

Can you see how the tree got its name? There's a very definite snout shape under that lower branch.

David and a Clara blur

Clearly a pig.

The view from the pig face tree rock - Elouera Bushland Reserve

There's been a few bushfires through here over the years, my Mum was talking this afternoon about being involved with a community fire group - apparently you need to either have a swimming pool yourself to do so, or a neighbour with a pool, that can be used as a water source if/when the mains pressure drops off during a bushfire. I gather the next door neighbour is being co-opted into that role.

Burnt tree trunk in the afternoon light.

Caitlin and Clara.

Walking along Duneba Drive.

Mum and Liz.

Wearing matching jackets and earrings (though you can't really see Liz's earrings). I guess it's a twin thing.

The kids and dog beat us back to Mum's by long enough for Dave to be engrossed in his game by the time we caught up.

The house I grew up in.

The bedroom I grew up in.

With the bed I slept in. And the doona cover I slept under. Almost 19 years later and nothing has changed! The bed is now used by grandchildren sleeping over. When David was little and we were first leaving him with my Mum for the night he was quite taken with sleeping in my bed.

For more fabulous Sundays in my City posts head on over to Unknown Mami's place see what everyone else has on show.

P.S. No decluttering pics today, I gave myself the day off.

One room pretty much sorted

The study is now downstairs and functioning. There's still a bit of sorting through of the stuff in the cupboard and on the bookshelf in there and an awful lot of sorting through what's been left behind in the old study to do, but we'll get through that eventually.

Before we could begin moving desks we needed to clear a path so we could take them through the garage to the back yard, back in through the rumpus room and along the downstairs hallway to the study. This was not a trivial exercise and we didn't really deal with the clutter so much as move it around.

Garage

Rumpus room

Hallway

I really wish I had after photos of all those areas showing off  a complete absence of clutter but hey, it turns out we're only human.

The garage looks pretty much the same because we just shifted stuff out of the way and then put it back again.

The rumpus room doesn't look much better either and what's worse, my bedroom now looks like this:

The downstairs hallway has accumulated a slightly different collection of clutter, including the almost empty wine rack which we decided wasn't going to fit in the study after all.

After doing all that I decided that seeing I was on a roll I'd do something I'd been planning on for a while. I got Adam to help me dismantle the top bunk in David's room so he could actually sit up in bed to read and I wouldn't hit my head every time I tried to kiss him goodnight (it was a very low bunk).

If only the other half of his room was even remotely close to this tidy.  

What am I going to do with half a bunk bed and a crappy old mattress?

Now all that remains to do for the evening is finish watching Jaynestown, drink the rest of that glass of muscat sitting on the coffee table and then unearth my bed so I can get into it!