Little / Big

Went out for dinner at a Spanish restaurant (Movida), with a voucher I won at work last year; we had an almost $400 dinner and it only cost us $35.

Planted up about a dozen pots of succulents, and expanded the succulent garden outside our dining room window (trying to distract from the boring view of the boundary fence).

Dropped off several shopping bags’ of stuff to the opshop as we continue cleaning stuff from the living room.

Cleaned the deck and set up an area to paint mural panels (again, more distractions from the boring fence view - especially once the new kitchen windows go in).

Painted the undercoat on the cement sheet panel for the first mural, measured out grid lines, and transposed almost all of the first image (only 8 out of 32 squares to fill!).

Caught F’s head cold (tested negative for all the things on the home test kits), and had a fever dream convinced that this was the end of me… but in the next dream/delirium was stressing about what will go in the new storage in the living room.

Tiles arrived today! Ignore the white glue stuff, it’s part of the packing (I think), and it comes off easily. I love the colour and texture variations.

We’re sort of at this paused point with the renovations. We’re waiting on the cabinetry to be finished and then installed for the living room, and once that’s done, the living room flooring can be done. After that, the final measurements get taken for the kitchen cabinetry and then it’s waiting on that cabinetry and the builder’s availability.

We have everything except a sink tap and filtered water tap - our spare room has a sink, oven, cooktop, rangehood, cabinet handles, ceiling lights, and now tiles. All the colours for the bench top and cabinets and living room flooring and wall paint have been picked out.

We’re gradually clearing out the bookshelf and TV cabinet to move and sell - some things have gone on FB marketplace (the Wii sold super quickly!), others to the opshop and local buy nothing group.

After a couple of teaspoonfuls, he smacked his lips and his eyes lit up and he declared, “I like honey and lemon!” And it was some of the few clear words he spoke to me before he passed a couple of days later.

We might be past the winter solstice but the coldest weather is probably yet to come (and the last couple of mornings have shown a taster of that).

Today marks a year that I’ve been back in life insurance. The role is interesting enough in that no two cases are the same, but on the other hand, it’s the same role I was in 10 years ago. More challenging work at work would be good in a way, but for the most part I do my job during office hours and it leaves plenty of brain space for other more fulfilling challenges outside of work hours. Maybe that’s all I need? If only there was more non work hours for the non work stuff. (It’s also my 19th year in the insurance industry which seems impossible I’ve had a career that long?). In a couple of weeks there’s a Sunday lunch catch up with old workmates, and I’m really looking forward to it. We spent so long working together and a bunch of us got made redundant at and around the same time; they’re such a great group of people. We try to get together a couple of times a year, and there’s a few that I try to catch up with more frequently in between.

I’ve got a little bit of time off coming up (for the winter school holidays), and I can’t wait to throw myself into art stuff. Planning on starting the murals!!! The thing I’m still struggling with is figuring out the paint - because it’s outdoors, I’m planning on using exterior acrylic house paint. And that’s not cheap, so I’m trying to minimise the colours I need to buy by getting colours that I can then mix to make the appropriate shades of greens / blues (which make up the bulk of the images). Think I’ll need to go to a paint store or Bunnings and ask for advice (and hopefully not sound like an idiot).

Also hoping to get to the pottery studio for a bit of extra time throwing during my time off - because the next two Saturdays in my 4 week course are trimming and glazing, and I want to keep building on my throwing practice. (I made a plate on the weekend, and a really lovely bowl - stepping away from ramekins finally!!! Also have plans to make some plant pots, including a self-watering hanging basket design - but I need to keep throwing to get my skills to that point.

Almost every evening this week I’ve sat and worked on my mural images, altering, adapting and gridding up some native flora inspired images I found online. The next step will be working out the colours, so each image becomes a bit like a paint-by-numbers, so that they can be then gridded on to the mural surface. It’s challenging and frustrating but so satisfyingly fun at the same time.

And tonight is art class - which fills my cup being surrounded by a group of amazing and supportive women, plus we get to draw / paint. Last week’s unfinished Tasmanian devil (I might work on him more in tonight’s class, or I’ll just start the next thing):

F went back to school on Friday. He was exhausted Saturday and slept til 10am, and was ready for bed again by 7pm. His knee is still in a brace and he’s still on crutches, he can’t weight bear still, and if we remove the brace the lack of stability (even just laying on his bed) is painful. He had an MRI done Friday afternoon. The images came through yesterday (no report until we see the doctor) and from best I can tell, there’s definitely bone bruising on both the tibia and fibula, and something going on in the joint but I don’t exactly know what. (As an aside - we haven’t had to pay anything at this point - ED visit, crutches, brace, xray, CT scan and MRI have all been covered by Medicare. The Australian health system is far from perfect but it gets some things right).

I signed up for a 4-week pottery short course, and hopefully my wheel throwing will develop a little further from making tallish ramekins. I spent another 2.5hrs on Saturday afternoon practicing the skills I learned last week, and it definitely helped make things click. Having a creative outlet is so necessary for me - it keeps the mental health demons at bay, and helps me learn over and over that the goal isn’t perfection, the goal is in the doing and focus and clear mind.