Well it's only cupboards-in for now. As for the required stainless steel appliances, we are slowly accumulating from a variety of places such as Gray's Online, Ebay, and a seemingly nice Middle Eastern gentleman I bumped into when I took a wrong turn in West Sunshine.
Meanwhile...
Opal has moved paddock. She now lives with Churchy friends Andy and Cherie on their charming little 5-acreage only a short walk from Lara's Elcho Park Pony club grounds. Opal, or "Ope's" as she is now known in fine Aussie name-abbreviating tradition, has no other horsies in the paddock. As a result she appreciates our company and as such is now extremely well behaved. Our earlier brush with a potentially expensive horse illness turned out to be little more than a hormone imbalance.
In fact, Ope's is now the best behaved young woman in our family!
Notice I said "young" so I'm not talking about Sharon so I'm immune to...
...oh wait, that made it worse...
ANYHOO just t'other day, Omi, her new friend from her un-named school and me walked Opey down to the Pony Club. The thought of using a horse float hadn't occurred to me, partly because the Club is "just down the road", and partly because we don't own one (expensive billykart toy still not sold. Come on!!)
Trouble is, "just down the road" always looks different when you're driving. When you're walking two Year 7 girls and a Pony who has little exposure to moving traffic, it all seems much further.
In the end, Opey was less stressed about the passing cars than I was. Although she did get jittery at the sign of, um.....a sheep.
At the Pony Club grounds all the girls, two and four-legged, had a great time, according to Omi. Double Hallel-looo-yah!
I'll write more later, unless I get injured in a spectacular mountainbike crash, which is looking more exceedingly likely every time I venture out to the spectacular You Yangs. One can but hope...
I won't even attempt to summon any sarcasm or wit here. We knew it would be bad last Saturday when it was 45 deg and blowing a gale. But nobody mentioned a death toll until late Sunday, and then it was relentless. 25-50-70-"probably over 100"- 130...
Now as I write it's probably over 300 people dead. Including entire families. It's utterly, utterly awful and impossible to feel detached. Although I admire the pragmatism of the writer in this article here. An interesting take and good background if you live in a bushy area.
One survivor said they estimated the fire was ten kilometres away as they decided to stay. It was upon them in less than two minutes. The worst fronts at Kinglake and Marysville moved at 130km/h. They are (were) lovely areas. Nothing but bush.
If you find a reputable outlet taking donations, please give as much as you can. Cheers.
"...So we are now being fired on from the north, the south, and the east. We're not being fired on from the west because the fish don't mind us being here".
Raul Emmanuel, Bill Clinton's husband Hillary, and that Joe Biden fellow, whose mouth the Democrats are so desperate to keep from opening they keep yelling out "Look! Up in the sky!!" every time he's about to hold a press conference...
But that's not the real reason I used the above title for this post. I found out that "kitchen cabinet", the term used to describe a national leader's inner circle, was coined by the amazing Israeli PM Golda Meir, when she actually held meetings in her kitchen. But that's not the reason either.
It's because Sharon's new kitchen is growing in reality every day. More later.
I could bore you all with a wrap up of my farewell-to-the-thirties party held in Adelaide recently, but I suspect the only people who read this blog, if indeed there are any, were at the party so you all know what happened, unless you drank too much in which case whatever happened was nothing to do with me.
Still, I will say that it was just beaut to return to good ol' Adelaide and be reunited with old friends...
How did I ever leave you..?
Anyhoo, I wish I could thank each one of you for the amazing gifts, even more I wish I could remember who gave me what. Although I will single out the one person, who I know reads this blog, who didn't actually give me anything, instead bringing a gift for Naomi. I'm sure it resulted from a small miscommunication WHICH WILL BE RECTIFIED IN DUE COURSE.
In a material, worldly sense, the best gift was that of a mountain bike, to fill the small void left by my departure from motorsport . I made the quantum leap from cheap-heavy-Kmart-made-in-Taiwan bike which arbitrarily dismantles itself at the first sign of dirt or elevation change, to ultra-lightweight-dual-suspension-made-in-USA-who-cares-about-the-specifics-it-has-carbon-fibre-bits bike which will most likely outlast the owner.
With thanks to Fil for the bargain basement price on his magnificent mountainbike creation. Less thanks goes to Fil for taking me for a test-ride at Brownhill creek. Following him at any speed in or on any type of vehicle conjures up hallucinations of red Austin Sprite following dayglo yellow Austin Sprite in the 1980's, with competitive urges welling up to the surface. As Fil belted over narrow paths, steep inclines and jagged rocks, I did myself proud and kept up.
Then as we arrived to the more civilised flat concrete paths at the picnic grounds, I fell off.
When did irony become so painful? Still, since hitting some of the local tracks around Lara, I am convinced it does fill the void. Compared to billykart racing, the downside is it involves exercise, but the upside is I could get even more seriously hurt doing this. Yeah!!
Note that in the above footage of me I go by the name of "Gee" and lie about my age.
In other news; it is a social norm for husbands to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible, and now I have discovered why. I've also discovered that, on average, we only do renovations of any kind every four years (really). Our four years is up, so Sharon's laminate brown and orange kitchen has been wrenched out kicking and screaming.
Aahh! Israelis destroyed my kitchen
Well yes, okay, it was me doing the kicking and screaming. My least favourite bit was removing the big white tiles to find that the timber floors underneath, which I expected would take a mild sand and polish to be brought up to my exacting standards, actually looked like they had been peppered with machine gun fire and napalm.
A great thing about being in a Christian fellowship, besides the eternal salvation and personal growth and all that, is that you can meet all sorts of tradespeople. Sure enough, as the project's scope has "crept" somewhat, we have been graced with a champion plumber and electrician- men of such quality and resolve that they have not shirked from crawling under the house (barely foot-high stumps) or in the ceiling (lots of spiderwebs). HuzzaH !! Don't be offended, dear blog readers, if they are the only ones we ever invite around for dinner in our new kitchen.
In yet again even more news, as if I needed more reminding of how old I am, Omi started her first ever day of HIGH SCHOOL. I won't name the school, since some inexperienced blog readers here are paranoid about too many personal details being published on the interweb. I can understand that, since I am such an enormously high profile and controversial figure and terrorists are constantly scanning my blog to work out how they can destroy us.
Here's how the team looked prior to Mum's-first-day-of-relief-in-ages:
I mean, the only person who has sent me serious death threats actually knows my address so we either have nothing to worry about or my various nemeses (nemesii?) have not yet discovered vehicular transport.
Well, that's all for now so, and as they say at (whatever school Naomi goes to): Fortiter et Suaviter! Which I think means "strength and good fashion sense". Toodles.
Cue "Handel's Messiah"...
Opal has moved paddock. She now lives with Churchy friends Andy and Cherie on their charming little 5-acreage only a short walk from Lara's Elcho Park Pony club grounds. Opal, or "Ope's" as she is now known in fine Aussie name-abbreviating tradition, has no other horsies in the paddock. As a result she appreciates our company and as such is now extremely well behaved. Our earlier brush with a potentially expensive horse illness turned out to be little more than a hormone imbalance.
