Moving Studio Duck, the photoessay

Before:



Packing:



Now:



During:



At the other end:





(none of this shows the chaos of boxes in the third part of the garage space)


And that's about all the energy I have at the moment, apart from saying that I won't be able to resist the chance to go in to the old space and have a skate tomorrow, before I give it back... look at all that lovely clean concrete!

She's leaving home

Another photo-post, mainly because it's very hard to describe how I feel about leaving a house that I never warmed to, but which is now full of very precious memories. I had a watery tart morning as I locked it up for the last time, thinking about my son as a baby, the changes I made the house go through to make me feel like I was escaping my past instead of being trapped in it, and while I feel thankful that I've moved to somewhere that I love, a little piece of me will be reluctantly floating over the distressed wooden floorboards like a vapour wisp.

If you need more words, go to my flickr stream.
























I'd like to formally thank Colonel and Lady Duck for giving me a home of my own, and for all their support even though I whinged a lot about the house. It wasn't actually the house, but I guess you knew that.

BBQ Day: a photo-essay

Yesterday was Canberra Day, a holiday we had and you didn't, to celebrate CANBERRA. I chose to spend the day taking piles of rubbish to the tip, which I thought was apt, and then I planned to build the rest of the outdoor setting gifted to us house-warmingly by Colonel & Lady Duck, and also the fancy-pants BBQ gifted to himself by Best Beloved.

After the tip trip, carrying old wardrobes that had been knocked apart and all the crap that comes with buying new things (which is why I hate buying new things), like masses of plastic and polystyrene



and cardboard



I got a phonecall from byrd, with a background of much high-energy squealing and similar noises. Could he and Owen (Zoe's partner) and all their respective kids come over to ours to get said kids from under the feet of respective partners? Absolutely, says I, if you help me build my BBQ. Righty-ho! They were over in a flash, with kids that emerged from their cars like a cork out of a bottle, amd a six-pack of BBQ-building beer.

So here's our afternoon:


Team BBQ. byrd and Owen, finding all the bits.


Meanwhile, I am Team Chair. Best Beloved is Team Faff around the Kitchen.


In the still quite bare loungeroom (around the corner from the tv-feet-up room) is Team Nintendo DS. To the left, out of shot, is our sandstone mantelpiece and open fire (not lit). Grand Days!


A couple of beers later, Team BBQ haven't lost any tempers, but they're having trouble finding a couple of pieces.


Team Chair becomes Team Table, which evolves into Team FAIL until Best Beloved surprises me by working out how to get three of the misaligned legs on a bit more easily, and Owen the Engineer works out the last one. You can see the coppiced paperbarks in the back yard. They're lovely, but they're getting taken out in favour of some fruit trees sometime in the nearish future.


Team Cook, standing around feeling justifiably satisfied, sucking on a beer each, discussing meat smoking and rotisserie strategies, but in the meantime whipping up some humble snags for the kids.


Our grass-free back yard, complete with new table and chairs. By the end of the evening, all chairs were occupied (although moved inside, because it started raining).

And finally, Padge, out the front on the silly front light pedestal (the light doesn't work so far) with a cheesy black cat statue I found once at a garage sale. It looks up adoringly at people entering, something Padge never does, although he is very welcoming in a dignified kind of way.



One of his nicknames is 'Dignity Puss'.

As promised, the bed

I feel like International Wimmins Day has rolled right over me, and left me a bit bruised and exhausted. Today I've (in no particular order) packed and unpacked umpteen boxes, taught a class, bought some shoes, helped a load of students and a senior teacher, ridden my bike across town and back, had lunch with my hubbie, talked my son through his homework plans, amused the cats, attended a committee meeting and written the first draft of a second-round project application.

How's that for a full bloody life, eh? Classic over-'extender', dunno about 'achiever'.

For the record, 'buying shoes' was probably the girliest thing there besides lunching the hubbie (he paid, dammit), but the shoes themselves were NOT girlie, and anyone who knew me in the 80s (I think that's only you, Jo, and maybe Steeve, and possibly Lisa, if you read this) will laugh when they see them:



RIPPLE SOLES! I lived in these for at least ten years, then they disappeared off the shelves until this year. The guy in the shop laughed when I told him this, and said he's been trying to source them for years too. The originals ('Rollers', we both said at the same time, thus establishing our cred with each other, which I pretty much destroyed by saying 'SNAP') used to be made in Poland, but these are made in China and don't quite have the 'roll' as you walk that the Polish ones did. But I love them, and my feet are happy.

So. The bed. A gas-lift bed, for those enquiring minds who enquired, is a storage bed wot with you can store your winter/summer doonas or sex toys or whatever you want to store, and it has a gas-lift hydraulic thingy to help you lift the mattress to get to the storage (thank goodness, because we bought a huge mattress. The cats love it).



The bits, fresh from the flat-packed boxes.


The bits to put the bits together.



Me, putting the bits together. This is the abbreviated, censored, soaped-mouth version.


The gas-lift hydraulics, ready for the mattress.


The final bed, with brand-new linen. We keep looking at the old (Queen, so still big) bed on the low ex-futon base and wondering how we fitted into it. In this bed, sometimes in the night I don't even know there's someone else sleeping with me. BLISS.

Speaking of which, I desperately need a hot bath to relax my screaming muscles before I sleep. So ciao, until the next batch of bad iPhone photos or I get the chance to vent. Still no broadband, no tv, no telephone. Just a dongle. Happy IWD, peoples.

happy cat is happy

Actually, the cats are nervous and prowly, but Padge didn't seem to mind a chin scratch a little while ago as I booked some cinema tickets on the internet:



You can see one of the things I love about our new house: the slate detailing on the outside.

By the time BB had loaded and unloaded masses of things, then I helped to unload and partially unpack other things, we were absolutely exhaustipated (tired and nothing comes out right). My lovely friend K has moved to Canberra from the Southern Highlands, into a house JUST around the corner, so she bounced around and we drank a bottle of bubbly then walked around to Wilburs (our new local) just in time to order food before the kitchen closed.

Then we fell into bed and slept soundly with the nervous kitties for half the night, but then newness and strangeness took over and I found myself sitting in the loungeroom with wide-awake cats at 4.30am, talking to them about the niceness of their new home. Then we lay in bed pinching each other and saying, 'we're actually here!' Finally we all got back to sleep, but we also had to awake at dawn's crack to give back the rental truck.

So. We're underslept, caffeinated and happy, unpacking merrily but I have just bought cinema tickets in the anticipation of both of us crashing emotionally in a few hours and needing to eat and be entertained without having to talk to each other. Tomorrow Bumblebee gets back from his parental visit and Real Life in the New House begins in earnest.

Hope you're having a good weekend, too!

Poo bum

I thought, since I've packed up all our internetty connection thingies* at home, that I'd be able to download some of my documentary snaps at work & show you yesterday's massive bedmaking effort.

But poo bum, no. My work computer has been overhauled since I last worked here (6 months) and all the useful things have been removed, and no software has been updated. All I can use is the internet. I can't even download photos. Sigh. Getting that all fixed will take a lot of time and phone-based earache and energy that I just can't spare right now.

As I type (quicky between chores), Best Beloved and byrd are packing all our furniture into a hired truck and hauling them one kilometre up the road to the new house. I'm best at work, out of the way, we both agreed when we decided, late yesterday, to go ahead with the move even though our dratted house buyers HAVEN'T exchanged yet. We figure, since they have requested permission to move in before Settlement and pay us rent etc, that they are serious and won't fall through.

So. Today, after work, I ride my bike to the new abode! I saw hot air balloons this morning on the way back from driving BB to Fyshwick to pick up the truck. Good-o, I thought: it's a Balloon Day. Excellent omen.

Yesterday our new beds were delivered. We borrowed enough money to buy a couple of new things, like beds and a BBQ (things that are better bought new, not secondhand) and the rest of our purchases will be secondhand, like couches and dining chairs -- Zoe is lending us a lovely cedar dining table that is sculking in the corner of her house, aching to entertain. Colonel and Lady Duck bought us an outdoor table setting as a house gift, bless them. It arrives today too, flatpacked and ready to assemble.

Bumblebee's new bed is a King Single, and only needed its little feet screwed on to the base (which is also a bed in its own right, so the two halves can be pulled apart for sleep-overs). Our bed, however, was delivered flat-packed (apart from the mattress) and needed to be assembled. So that was yesterday's task for me.

I will insert before and after photos here when I can upload them. Suffice to say that there is a special circle in Hell for people who write construct assemblage instruction sheets. All the bits were there, but the instructions were supremely unhelpful, and in fact quite obstructive. I eventually just glanced at it to make sure I wasn't doing anything downright dangerous, and worked it out for myself. I like assembling things; I have friends who ring me up to build their Ikea whatevers etc for them, but I do get very cranky with bad instruction design.

I now have a magnificent (and solid) King Size gas-lift storage bed, fully made up and ready for us to fall into, exhausted, tonight. I feel righteous. The flat-packed outdoor setting will be a lot easier, I'm hoping!

So the cats are nervous, sticking together in worry and not sure whether we're abandoning them, or if we'll be taking them to the vet later or something. I can't wait for them to be prowling around the new rooms. Every window sill is wide enough for them to laze upon! Kitty heaven. As the nice man who came yesterday to install the catflap said: 'you don't find houses like this anymore.'

SQUUEEEEEE!



* I've been the resident amateur IT person at every workplace I've worked since the introduction of the Mac Classic. I put it down to my use of simple and accessible technical vocabulary.

hurry up, hurry up

So much for the easy Monday exchange. Thanks to lawyers and banks stuffing up, exchange is slated for this afternoon. It better be, we've booked the truck for tomorrow and the new beds arrive in an hour.

I have primed up my iPhone camera for documentation porpoises.

I have met the pets on one side: two cats and a little yappy dog. One of the cats has obviously learned from the dog, as it is yappy too, and looks like a miniature version of our cats. We'll have a black cat street! Mind you, I think it will be chaos for a while.

Padge has also been ill. I have had to squirt horrid expensive antiobiotics down his throat with a syringe four times a day. I have become an expert at grabbing a huge handful of the scruff of his neck to pull it back for the squirting. It's not pretty, but it's a great skill to learn and I wish I'd been shown it years ago, could have some in handy with Bumblebee :) Anyhoo, the drugs are working, he's perky as hell today.

Action Stations

Without wanting to jinx the process...

WE FOUND A BUYER!!!!!

Yay, huzzar and all of that!

... and they are willing to exchange on Monday and settle ASAP.

Which means ACTION STATIONS. We will be moving house over the next week, and will hopefully be spending our first night in Hackett next weekend!

so close...

I received the keys to our new house today and shared a bottle of bubbly* with a couple of close friends (in lieu of Best Beloved, who is on a study week away in Sydney) and forgot to take a photo.

It was a lovely feeling, sitting first in the back yard, then on the front step, then sprawled on the carpet of one of the empty rooms, drinking from some gorgeously sturdy French glasses that lovely Sacha gave me as our very first housewarming gift, knowing that this was the place that I was going to be operating from for the next umpteen years. It already felt like home, and there was nothing, nothing of mine in the place, except my son, who was just as delighted as I was.

So... no photo, sorry. I can only really blame myself for dropping my camera out of the car at Christmas time, and for just not thinking about the camera in my iPhone when I really should.

We're still waiting for an offer on the old house... we can't move into the new one until we've exchanged contracts, so I have to be patient, my creatures. At least now I can pop inside & sit on the floor instead of lurking around the cobwebby front garden.


In other, hopefully distracting news, semester has started at art school, and today I met my new booketeers for the first time. They seem a very keen, thoughtful, enthusiastic bunch, which is so cheering. I've also got a couple of exchange students auditing the class, so it's full to capacity, and makes the BookStud a touch snug.


Someone who drops by my studio to play with my press occasionally and travels to England frequently, loaned me a book about Lucien Pissaro (son of Camille), who started a press heavily inspired by the Arts & Craft movement. Which, once I'd looked at it, took me straight to my bookshelf to re-read The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt. Delicious, fabulous, mesmerising.

Bumblebee is enjoying year 8 much, much more than year 7. He's doing his first batch of electives, and to my surprise he chose Industrial Tech and Outdoor Ed. In the former he's coming home glowing after using chisels and planes, full of the praise of his dour teacher, having listened to my advice that he needed to focus on the tools rather than his friends. Mind you, this is the *only* class where he applies that focus, which is a pity. I wish all classes had dangerous elements that could cut and maim, maybe kids would do better if they did. The latter class is full of wonderful energetic, limit-pushing confidence-growing activities like sailing, rock-climbing and snorkel-diving. He's so excited. It's perfect for a 14-yo who is discovering how being tall and limber and fast is FUN. Bless him, he's changed so much over the last year or so.

Hmmm, coming down from the champagne. Wish Best Beloved was here to keep up the SQUEEEEEE feeling. Have to wake up early tomorrow to teach the UCan graphic design students. Might be time to snuggle up with the cats (who are going to LOVE their new domain) and read the book.

Good night!




*Our lovely real estate agents gave me a bottle of Moet with the keys, but I'm saving that for our first real night in the house.

Housie

We are trying *very* hard to find the right buyers for our house (or any buyers at all, actually), so to the delight of our agent, her proffered weekly editorial to the Canberra Times was not only accepted, but followed through with an interview and -- unheard of for this particular column -- a photographer sent around to shoot us in our lovely unique kitchen.



Click here to embiggen, but it's a bit embarrassing. Firstly, I look DREADFUL, but BB comes across beautifully. Secondly, they took my description of our budding fruit plantings and made it come across as if we're a bounteous Garden of Eden (we're not, there's a lot of room for improvement, but a solid framework of edible things is growing), and thirdly it sounds as though our friend discounted his services mightily. He didn't, formally, but we did give him a pretty tight budget and he did so much more with it than we expected, and we're still utterly grateful to him. I've scrubbed his name out because he's not building anymore, and we didn't want him to be asked if he would do 'just one more'.

You can also see a small fraction of BB's Poole Pottery collection, the jugs, up on the 'floating shelves'. The rest has been in boxes for years, but our new house has ample space to display nearly all of it.

The best bit about the column is that the article straight after ours is reminding everyone that the market is healthy, and yet to find its peak.

So, after prostituting our dignity (and BB's anonymity) and pimping our cats every Wed and Saturday: if it doesn't sell soon, I'm going to be morose. One more week of advertising and then we have to make some hard decisions. There must be a right person out there somewhere. It's a sweet little house.


Remember to breathe, Duckie. You all have full permission to remind me of that. Again, we're not under mud, or on fire, or blown over. That's a good thing to think about.

Down tools

Wow, it's my first day since the new year started when I haven't had to pack, patch, paint or clean anything. I'm also child-free till tomorrow. I've spent the morning catching up on some work I had to do, and yesterday I sorted my tax, so I'm toying with the idea of going to the movies. Or going back to bed with my Connie Willis novel (I just finished The Domesday Book, am rereading Blackout because All Clear is winging its way from the Book Depository). Tough call.

Apparently our open house sessions on the weekend were a triumph. I can't say for sure, because we had to be out of the way, and Mr Padge just can't seem to articulate clearly enough for me to make out more than FEED ME.

On Saturday there were 21 groups through, more than any other house in the area. At the dot of 10:30am the empty street was suddenly full of cars; they must have been lurking around the corner. We scarpered, and there was no sign of the cats as we left in the opposite direction. As soon as we disappeared, the cats came out and set up begging stations, one in the back yard (Mr Pooter) and one right inside in front of the front door (Mr Padge, of course), so that people had to step over him to enter. Our agent thought this was marvellous, so didn't shove him out of the way. 'A novelty,' she called him. We have other words to describe him when he uses this very familiar blocking technique.

Yesterday, Sunday, the agent expected around 10 groups. We got 12. The weather was gorgeous each morning, turning grey and ploppy later in the day. Lucky us! Padge stationed himself a bit further from the door, wandering in and out with the people, playing host.

Today he's sprawled near the door, looking outside wistfully, wondering who is going to come today for his pats. Thankfully, no-one. He can suffer in his jocks, spoiled puss.

So now it's in the hands of Ceiling Cat. We have another double-day weekend coming up, but anything could happen in the next few days. In the ACT you only have to get one builder's report, and this gets sent, with the contract, to interested parties to consider if they express interest. A much more sensible way of doing things rather than each group having to commission their own report. Whoever buys the house, pays for the report. So far 5 groups have requested the contract & report from our agent, and there have been a few requests for rental evaluations. Fingers crossed!

On Saturday we went looking at beds and furniture, just cruising the shops. I hate shopping, and so does BB, so we ended up quite cranky. We cheered ourselves up with a Hindi movie (I can't say Bollywood, because it was much more arthouse than that, with no dancing or singing, and only 2 hours long as opposed to the usual 3 or 4) called Dhobi Ghat, or Mumbai Diaries. It was great; if you get a chance to see it, it's very beautiful and quite engaging. We followed that with dinner at our favorite South Indian restaurant, Ruchi in Belconnen, where we treated ourselves to a Thali, Best Beloved's favorite way of eating. He had the meaty version and I had the vegetarian, which is excellent albeit a bit too reliant on coconut flavours throughout the dishes.

Yesterday we went to CanCon at EPIC and had a wander around, marvelling at the separate universe that exists to one side of ours. CanCon is the local gamers' conference, and there were three huge rooms: one devoted to board games, one to card games (like Magic, Pokemon etc) and the last to role-playing and figurine-based games (is that the right way to describe Warhammer?). Lots of amazing merchandise and fun people to watch and very funny t-shirts to read. We didn't play anything, but we did buy a few games to bring home.

I'm hoping to get into my studio over the next few days to do something more than just clean up the mess. I have a few workshops coming up, at Belconnen Arts Centre and at Megalo, so if you want to spend a day or so making stuff, come along!

I think the first thing to do is to go for a walk to my postbox. There's something in it, and it just might be the Connie Willis book, which will determine the rest of the day's trajectory.

The 'spot the cat' game

Well, I've done all the hard work, and the realtor's sign is hammered into the verge, signalling that the house is on sale. The photos are on a couple of websites, but BB has advised me not to put a direct link here in case Bad Peoples are reading.

I don't believe that Bad Peoples hang about here, do you?

Anyhoo, I'll respect his wishes, but I'm sure if you're one of my smart readers, you can find it for yourself, especially if I share some of my favorite photos with you.



Spot the cat!
Golly, our kitchen looks good. It hasn't looked this good since it was built instead of having a flashy wedding (by a friend who has excellent woody skillz). In fact, it almost looks better than then because he left us a few final jobs which weren't done until a couple of weeks ago.


Spot the cat!
I find this photo quite embarrassing. Our couches are really not that purple when you see them in situ. I was shocked when I moved one of them from the (tip)shop where it looked 'normal' to the car in the sunlight where it looked this purple. The photographer turned on all the lights and used a fancy flash, and lo! the couches are purple. In the normal house light they look a lovely dark purply-brown, sort of like what baby poo looks like after they've eaten beetroot.

I'm really not selling the couches to you, am I? Sigh. As I told our lovely real estate agent: up to now I've had pets and a small child. Who buys new furniture? Not anyone with a practical streak.

OK, next:


Spot the cat!
This one is a tricky one. Mr Padge was lying slothfully on the front step, and you can only just make him out behind the greenery. It's amazing how wide they can take the shot without making it all buggy and fish-eyed.

So there you go. There are other pics, but they are the cattiest.

Wish us luck... we're having viewing sessions on both days of the next two weekends. And crossing our fingers that someone likes our house's quirky charm, including Best Beloved's many fruity jam plantings (red currants, apricots, quinces, plums and grapes). We have to make ourselves scarce during the viewings, and are planning some jaunty escapades to stop ourselves from fretting.

And we're making bets about whether the cats stay and fawn over people or scarper as well. Do let us know if you visit and spot them. Extra points in the game :)

Almost there (ii)

Have resolved to stop feeling cranky about what I'm doing. My friend Jo's latest post and all the news that is around us about the flooding has brought it home to me that what I'm doing is absolutely minor compared to what is ahead of a lot of Queenslanders. At least my house isn't full of mud (although what was behind our kitchen bookshelf was quite alarming).

Bumblebee is back for his two days of home but isn't very useful (he's a tad cack-handed in a gawky teenage way) so is watching Stah Waz to stay out of the way and doing occasional forays to the shops for me. The car is at the garage and it's raining so we're stuck at home, a great excuse to try to finish all the indoor chores.

Better get on. I'm sorry about the floods, hope all my Qld friends are coping. I'm thinking dry thoughts for you.

Almost there

Trying to remember to breathe...





...but all I'm breathing is paint fumes.

House blues

Most of my friends will smile and nod when I say that I've always said I love moving house. And I do. I've done it a lot, I've always said that it's a chance to declutter and renew your sense of self, to start fresh and reinvent your life.

Up until now, every move has been from a rented house to a rented house. Pack, clean the walls, patch a few holes/cover up red wine stains, ring the service providers, move on. Brilliant. But...

Getting the house (lived in for a record 13 1/2 years, and thus much more cluttered than the usual 2-year stint) ready for sale in under three weeks while your partner is back at work, your son is commuting between his father and you every three days... is not fun. I try to make it so with a bit of Facebooking, but that just sucks me in to world of fun that I juts should be ignoring for a while. There's also the normal commitments to meet like a workshop in Bega to teach (booked before the sudden move decision) and a conference paper to write.

I have the building inspector coming this Monday morning, unfortunately just before the bathroom sealer person (the sealant had a 5-year warranty, and was misbehaving after only 2 years, so is being replaced, yay), then the window and carpet cleaner coming on Friday, Best Beloved will be mulching the garden while I'm in Bega, then the industrial cleaners coming on the next Monday, the photographers coming on the Tuesday, and then the house goes in the papers and on the interwebs.

Le puff, le pant, as Pepe le Pew's friend used to say.

OK. I'll stop whinging. There's a lovely big house up the road that is empty and waiting for me to sign the dotted line and move in. Without that thought, I'd be going crazy.

The good good news is that my cousins had their twin baby girls and are in Mumbai as we speak, living on similar nerves and adrenalin, aching to take them home and start a new life. So exciting for them! Welcome to the world, girls! (I couldn't help myself being pragmatic within my comment to them; when Bumblebee was in hospital having his first heart surgery at 3 months old, my mother had a cold, and she wore a facemask into the ward to protect him. She had so much praise from the doctors and nurses, because very few people think that their germs mean anything in a hospital environment. I hope J understands that I'm not being a party-pooper.)

Oh well, back to the sanding (I love my drill!) and the painting. And the Scrabble. And the helpful cats who bring me presents of mice and disembowel them close by to show me how helpful they are.

Happy New Year

Welcome to my eighth year of blogging. I hope you're all enjoying the new year so far.

Our new year started with being woken by fleas in our bed.

Apparently fleas like a quiet house. I've had two tales told to me by members of each side of my family (old and new) of going away and coming back to a house so full of fleas that [tale 1] their feet were black with fleas as if wearing ankle socks and [tale 2] they had to sleep on a shelf of a wardrobe with the door closed to escape them. Apparently vibrations keep them (fleas, not both sides of my family) from wantonly breeding, but that sounds a bit suspect to me. Probably more to do with the lack of attention.

Anyhoo, we woke up resolved to do something about it. Going to Woollies at opening time on New Year's Day is now my favorite time to shop... so quiet! And all the people who are there are clutching their heads slightly. Almost as good as Best Beloved's mother who apparently went shopping while the whole world was watching the moon landing. Again, I'm a bit skeptical of that tale. Who was serving her?

We pulled the bed apart and cleared all the floors of the carpeted end of the house, kicked the cats outside, and set off some flea bombs. This, of course, meant that we had to go out for a few hours into the killing heat, so we went to the movies.

We saw The King's Speech. It was in Dendy's largest cinema, and there were no spare seats. The audience was vocally appreciative, laughing and cheering and at the end clapping. I think it's not only that the movie is excellent, with wonderful acting and a spiffing script; it does more to generate a sense of pride in being Australian than any Australian film could. I can't speak for any other audience member, but I related to Lionel's egalitarian spirit, his larrikin (sp?) streak, and his cheekiness. Colin Firth was his usual loveliness, especially when he swore. Sigh.

We came home feeling karmically unbalanced, having unleashed noxious gases upon hundreds of little bodies. But a solid vacuum and a bedding change later (plus a good cold shower), we feel much, much better.

Good enough to keep packing & cleaning tomorrow.

Photos are off, luv. I did lose my camera. Yes, I know that my iPhone has one, but it hasn't got a flash or macro. I'm officially in Object Mourning.

terribubbly sad but happy too

To be honest, I didn't know that Ruth Park was still alive until yesterday when she died. She's three years older than the Aged Poet (who is 90), so she had a lovely long life (although I hope she enjoyed her Extreme Old Age more than the AP is).

We are huge fans of The Muddle-headed Wombat. I packed the books away yesterday so I can't give you an example of the wonderful writing. Best Beloved was reading them aloud to me when I was sick recently and he does all the voices so well. In our minds Padge is Wombat and Puss is Pooter. Secretly in my mind, I am Mouse, Bumblebee is Wombat and BB is Puss.

Her novels and autobiographical work are wonderful as well, of course, but if she'd only ever written TMHW, it would have been legacy enough. Thank you, RP, and RIP.





The most excellent news is that after some high-tension negotiation argy bargy, we got to a price we could pay on the house we like. We haven't exchanged contracts yet, so cross fingers for me that all goes well until then. The best bit of the agreement is that we will get access to the new house's garage between Exchange and Settlement to store all our boxes etc so that the old house can be clear and uncluttered for the Open House time! *big sigh of relief*

I was out last night, and I'd left a tense and gloomy household, because of the argy-bargy. They were supposed to be cooking dinner, but nothing much had happened by the time I left. Then I got a text saying BRING PIZZA AND CHAMPAGNE. Shazam! I happily did so, knowing that the world had just turned on its axis.


So I'm suspending my studio activities for a month (unless something really urgent comes up) and devoting my energy to packing, painting, patching, and what ever else comes up. Apart from Christmas, of course. It's going to be extra relaxing, because we know how much work is ahead of us. W00T!

Not Wordless Wednesday

Although here's a little snap that could be wordless:








Oh, it's all excitement here.



Not wanting to jinx the process (I'm a practical person with odd little superstitions), we've put an offer in for the house we fell for, and have had a fairly positive response, with a few little points to negotiate (like the actual price), so it's full steam ahead for gussying up the Private Jetty for sale.

I've been trying to meet all my normal commitments whilst furiously painting bookshelves and packing books and knick-knacks to unclutter the space. I packed four boxes of little bits & pieces and afterwards couldn't even tell the difference, which was a bit depressing. Boxes are arriving en masse today so I can start packing up the piles of books that came from the main bookshelf in the loungeroom (that I've been meaning to paint for seven years, since it was built) and then we can move freely in the space again. One of the terms we're negotiating is to be able to use the garage space of the new house (which will eventually be Studio Duck) between Exchange and Settlement to store our boxes while we sell this house. Thankfully that shouldn't be a problem, according to the agent.

On the weekend I was sugar-soaping a few spots in readiness for paint and decided to use the rest of the bucket on the window-frames. Every spot I touched seemed to flake off, and I had a spot of the wobblies. Poor BB came in from the garden where he was doing a sterling job of de-ivying and de-cluttering and I had my first meltdown of the process, which was quickly defused by the swift administration of a chocolate brownie. Phew.

Ceiling Cat, bless sugar soap.

I'm so glad I'm not a painter as an artist. I really don't connect with the medium.

Of course, there has been help. Colonel Duck is here doing a marvellous job on the garden with his magic whippersnipper and DIY skillz


(that's the nicest view of his bum that I could get out of three photos)

I'm very grateful, and have been plying him with tea and fruit cake and risotto and wine, etc.

And of course, the cats are helping.



Mr Padge walked all over the (removable) shelves I was painting out the front and got white paddy paws, and Mr Pooter sniffed the shelves and ended up with a white Hitleresque moustache. All washed off now, but fricking hilarious.


Here's something to make *you* laugh. It made me laugh like a drain, and was a great way to bring ancient Egyptian history alive for Bumblebee:



(For anyone without access to pictures, like Thirdcat, it's a clip about Oprah Winfrey giving thousands of her most devoted fans the chance to be buried with her in a vast tomb called the Oprahmidion (built by said fans), along with all her favorite products to be used in the afterlife. Comedy gold.)