Life isn't so bad after all!

Thank you to all who left caring responses to my posts last week. It's funny how you see life sometimes; when those things are happening, you are really cheesed off at the time, but reading all that a week down the track, I am having a giggle! There's nothing too serious there.

We have just had another of those good old Aussie 'long weekends' - this one was the Labour Day weekend, supposedly to commemorate the 8 hour working day, I think? (No doubt those more knowledgable people reading this will correct me if necessary). I think we have far too many of these kind of days off here. After all, most Australians who work fulltime already get four weeks fully paid annual leave, not to mention a few days at Easter, and another half a dozen days scattered throughout the year. They are just nuisance value to some of us; for me it means that I am unable to service my home care clients because we are not allowed to work on public holidays. So they either go without the service, or I move them to Tuesday. Which I can do fortunately, but if I already had a full complement of clients on Tuesdays, the Monday people would just have to miss out.

Having said that, our long weekend was both pleasurable and productive. We brought Ken's mum over on Saturday for afternoon tea, to inspect our back yard, which is nearly finished. She was amazed at the difference (as everybody else has been who remembers the way it was). After a cuppa, Ken had a snooze on the bed, and I showed MIL a few things on my computer. We had been talking about embroidery, and so I showed her a number of my favorite blogs, with CQ, cross stitch, etc. and again she was amazed. She said "I wish I was 30 years younger, I would be right into all this!"

Sunday was a scorcher (over 100 deg.F), so Ken and I planned to stay inside with the aircon. going. We had a phone call from some friends to say they were coming up to visit, so I said come for lunch and inspect our back yard! So they did, and it turned out to be a good day, keeping relatively cool, sipping cold drinks and munching watermelon.

Monday started off with heavy rain all night and early morning, which was great for our yard, as it settled the dust, and kept the new mulch nice and moist ready for new plants. In the afternoon, Ken got a burst of energy and decided to clean out the five aviaries at the top of the yard, which have been empty of birds (but full of rubbish) for about 8 years. So it was a big job, and I pitched in to help him, as he had to keep stopping for breath, and I didn't want him collapsing in a heap at the end of the day! But we accomplished a lot, and he is now looking forward to restocking them with birds once the yard is completely finished; hopefully by the end of this week.