#100HappyDays - Another 7...

WOW!

4 weeks of happy - it's gone so quickly.

The thing that really stands out to me through this challenge so far, is that no matter what shitty things happen to me or around me in my day, there is always always a happy moment...  remember that 'happy' can be a smile, a moment of joy, of love, a memory, something that for just a moment, sparkles a little bit brighter than all the other moments around it.


Day 22:
This was the day we took MIL home.  We were in two cars as she had brought hers down with her so she & I would have transport when BM was at work.  She was in the new car  that I'm thinking of naming Betty... coz it's black... whoah Black Betty bam ba lam  with me and we had decided to take the Pacific Highway instead of the usual trip up the New England.  BM wanted to take her to the Slim Dusty Museum at Kempsey as she's such a huge Slim Dusty fan, but it turned out to be a bit of a bust due to the fact that we couldn't find it.

True to form, MIL talked the entire way.  From Singleton to Bellingen.  Constantly.  Without drawing breath.  When she ran out of things to talk about, she would read out the signs she saw on the side of the road.  If there weren't any signs, she would comment on the condition of peoples houses, what crops were growing in the paddocks, and what a silly idea it is to plant trees on the sides of the new stretches of highway...

At Bellingen we stopped at the fruit and vege market where she hopped in with BM to go up the mountain with him.  Going up the mountain on my own is a huge deal for me.  You see, I'm deathly afraid of heights.  Every time we go up or down that mountain, I do it with my eyes closed and a death grip on the door.  BM has permanent marks on his side where I grab him and dig the fingernails in.  The only time I've ever had them open was at 3am and the mountain was shrouded in fog.  We were following an ambulance containing FIL to Coffs Harbour Hospital, and I could keep them open because the visibility was next to zero, so I couldn't see how far down it was.

So there I am, quietly packing peanuts, declining MIL's very generous offer of staying with me, readying myself to drive alone up the Dorrigo Mountain.

BM heads off first, and I follow, he quickly loses me, as usual.  I'm doing okay, it's really quite pretty, and by the time I got to Thora I'm beginning to relax.  Then I got past  Thora.

I came around a bend onto a scene of complete and utter chaos!  A cattle truck coming down the mountain had jack knifed, tipping the trailer, and ripping the cabin of the prime mover off the chassis and depositing it on the road.  There were cars that had run into each other in a effort to avoid the accident - on both sides of the road, there were dead cows strewn across the road, more were still trapped in the trailer  the sounds of their distress were awful,  and the rest had been moved a little further up to a nearby property.  Amazingly, no one appeared to be seriously injured, apart from the cows... and cars were being directed though the wreckage one at a time in a effort to keep the traffic moving until police closed the mountain.

So as well as being lucky enough to have just missed being involved in the accident in the first place, I was lucky enough to make it through before the police closed the mountain.  Otherwise BM and MIL would have been at the top wondering where I was, and I would have been stuck at the bottom with no phone reception unable to tell them I was okay.

Onward and upward!  Thinking that things couldn't possibly get any worse, I tried to calm my nerves and continued on my way.  Thence to be confronted by my second greatest fear - a fully laden car carrier coming at me from the other direction.  On a bend.  In the middle of the road.  Oh.My.God.  Kill.Me.Now.

Obviously I made it out to tell the tale, and I have decided that if I can survive driving the Dorrigo Mountain by myself, narrowly escape being killed by a falling cow, and evade death by car carrier, then I can do anything!  After skulling a bottle of Moscato to settle my nerves...

I have never been so happy to see alcohol in my life!


Day 23:
Arriving home after what seemed like an entire month travelling was simply wonderful.

When I thought about it, we had been on the road for almost a month... There was the trip to the Gold Coast, then MIL came to stay for almost 3 weeks - during which time we were hardly ever home, what with new car shopping, showing her the sights, and taking her to all the decent shops...





Day 24:
Today was the coldest day in ages.  W had gone from mid to high 20's to about 10 degrees overnight and there was snow forecast for the Barrington Tops!  Time to light the fire.

I love the warmth you get from a slow combustion fire, love to watch the flames dancing over the logs, watching the coals glow, hearing the pop and creak of the chimney as it warms up.  The dogs love to lay on the ceramic tiles in front of it once they've absorbed the warmth, until they get a little too hot and then they retreat to the far side of the room... until they get too cold and then it begins again.

The slow combustion fire, I have decided, is like a rose bush.

Rose bushes hate me with a passion to be envied.  They manage to prick me with their thorns from 3m away!  Even the thornless varieties suddenly pop out some thorns when they see me coming their way.  BM thinks it's hilarious, and his Mum thinks I'm joking, roses are her favourite.  They keep buying roses along with all the other sacrificial plants.  They're usually the first to go.  Sad that.

Fires and I don't get along.  I can't light a fire without the help of at least half a packet of firelighters and the entire box of kindling.  I was raised in the city, and our idea of heating a room was to turn the electric heater on.  When I lived in Victoria, we had gas, but it was still a matter of just pushing a button.  Also, it burns me.  Not the fire itself, the boxy bit you put the fire in.  I've got scars from burns that I've accrued every year since buying the darn thing.  Yes I wear gloves - welding gloves in fact!  They come up to my elbows, I love them.  I had always worn gloves when handling the firewood, but always managed to get burnt where the gloves aren't, so year before last BM went and found me this enormous pair of leather welding gloves in a really lovely teal colour.  They were miles too big, and I felt like a 2 year old plopping around in her daddy's gumboots, but I didn't burn myself anymore.

Well, that was until BM decided that he would use them too, and left them on top of the fire box and burnt them to a crisp.  RIP gorgeous gloves... now I have ugly grey ones.  Oh well, they do the job.


Day 25:
Road Trip!!

A spur of the moment road trip to Sydney with Lyndal to suprise Amy at an unofficial end of round party for 12WBT.

From front to back:  Amy, Me, Lyndal, and peeking over the top of Lyndal's head is our resident photobombing meerkat - Michelle!

More about this in a separate post that you can find here.



Day 26:
Today is a Monday, and not my usual training day, but Madam Lash squeezed me in with the other Minions anyway.

I've been away from training for about a month, what with my holiday, ANZAC Day, Easter etc and even though I had been pumping out the km's with heaps of walking, my body missed the rest of the workout.

I missed the interval training, I missed the weights, I missed doing the hoppy steppy things...

I think when I got there, and started the work out, there may have been an audible sigh... that may or may not have sounded like I was enjoying it a little too much...







Day 27:
My fur babies, while much loved, drive me nuts.

The oldest one is Dozer, he's a body double for Hairy Maclary From Donaldson's Dairy, and he's pretty much the coolest dog ever, and the central character and star of The Great Caramel Incident, a hilarious mishap with a tin of caramel when he was a pup, you can read about here,  he turns 12 this year, and his years are beginning to show.  His eyes are clouded, his muzzle grey, he's a li'l bit deaf, he's got hip dyplasia, and we're pretty sure he has dementia... he gets up to go somewhere then suddenly stops and looks around as if to say 'where the hell was I going?' then he just relaxes his legs and his whole body just plonks to the ground with a thud.  He's always done it, never known another dog to lay down the way he does.  He's well behaved, eager to please and always does what you tell him.

The little white one is Tonka, she loves to cuddle, has only 2 teeth, has a permanent 'what the...?' look on her face, and is really really quiet.  She will generally do what you tell her as well..

Until someone comes to the door.  Then you'd think that they had magically transformed into hell hounds owned by Satan himself.  Or if one of us leaves the room for a couple of minutes, and then returns.  They carry on like its the Second Coming!  Can anyone say Separation Anxiety?

So when they finally, for once, stayed put, when I came home, I got all excited an had to share it.  DD says it doesn't count because I had to tell them to sit there for the shot.  But I had gotten in the front door a feat in itself  and put my handbag down, gone past them both out to the family room, come back past them to the lounge, and picked up my phone for the the photo, all the while sitting patiently on their bed - at which point it all got too much for them and they moved!  So I'm counting it.


Day 28:
With the cold weather setting in, and mornings getting chilly, it's time to break out my go to winter breaky.

Porridge!!

I don't use milk at all, just plain old no frills rolled oats and water, chuck it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and its done.

I sprinkle a little bit of sugar on the top and finish it off with some cinnamon.

It's simple, it's quick, and it sticks to your ribs!

I look forward to winter just for the porridge...
mmm nom nom nom