Autumn, Easter, family weekend.

Last week I was hovering on the edge of a cold. The long-awaited change of the seasons has come, and maybe it's too much of a shock! But I'm happy for Autumn anyway, I sleep better under blankets.

Speaking of sleeping better, my back is pretty much not complaining in the mornings anymore. I have adjusted to the new mattress, done some experimenting with pillows, various things. It's still a tiny bit crook maybe 1 or 2 days a week.

Despite all this wonderful sleep, and cold weather, I was feeling tired and almost sick. I think just the busy weekends have caught up with me. I thought every second weekend away alternating weekends at home was a good balance, and it did work really well for a while. I have squeezed so much joy out of life! And invested in important relationships. And avoided boring things like grocery shopping. 

Here is the good stuff going on.

My garden! I made ready and planted autumn seeds. I am glad my garden is small, as I am happy with the amount of work it requires, and I can keep it nice easily, but this is when I want more space because if I had more space I would plant so many sweet peas.

My birthday! Well, it's depressing to get older and all that, the 30s are going to be birthdays of sadness as my window for motherhood starts to close. I'm considering removing it from facebook and sort of denying the existance of birthdays all together so that nobody is sure how old I am (...about 30? mid-30s?... as I say about some of my friends!). But I have had joy from friends buying me an overnight bag. 1) it was on sale, = frugal, 2) they went halves, = frugal, 3) I got to track the shipping and collect it from the post office, 4) I can use it right away on the weekend!

Here are the struggles. 

There's a few new couples around, so I'm reminded of my solo status. I'm making an effort in particular with my housemate to be happy for people and not rain cynicism all over the joy of a new relationship. It's silly, I know all these people don't have perfect easy lives, but especially with young people it's like they don't know how lucky they are. That's self-pity.

I'm kind of bored of food. I have been for weeks. I'm bored of shopping, cooking, and eating what I cook. So in the spirit of not wasting energy on this area, I've cut down on shopping and cooking. I figure it's a good opportunity to eat through the contents of the fridge and pantry right to the back. Defrosting frozen meals, eating carrots, opening expired packets of biscuits. And then one day I'll do a Big Shop and restock all my staples. The meal that is suffering most from this approach is lunch. The best meals are breakfast and dessert. I've always got cereal and connoisseur ice cream!

And here are the photos.

My parents decided to get us all together for a weekend in a holiday house. It will now be an annual thing, probably close to a different persons birthday each year, which is a lovely tradition to start. This year the available weekend was Easter and it was my birthday. J brought the little boy she has been fostering for 3 weeks (and until he finds a forever home). He was good most of the time except for one bedtime. The rest of the time cute but demanding.

We stayed at Eaglereach at a house called Valley View run by Destiny Haven. It was very comfortable, also it was 45 minutes from home which is quiet easy, and also there were bush walks and kangaroo feeding and a spa and table tennis and different things to do at the site so that people could easily wander off and do something outdoors. But we also slept, read, and watched Castle season 1. I am PROUD to say I finished the Cross of Christ by John Stott. Not having a lot of phone signal was sad because I would have liked to put a lot of these photos on instagram, but really I'm trying to check on Facebook less so it was probably good overall. I could often receive and send texts.