May is a marathon.

And now I reflect on May! I am very thankful that I survived the amount of stuff I did. I knew it was going to be full and busy, and whenever I started getting stressed, I remembered, yes, it's a busy month, just hang in there, it will be back to normal after Women of Truth (yesterday). 

A moment to appreciate a very soft jumper I bought. Probably have too many jumpers now, I have a bit of a thing for them.

So, work was busy. A few big jobs that I felt like I had to paddle fast to stay in front of them all. This was a nice thing though, I helped a colleague from Goulburn use a fake photoshop program to draw flora distribution maps for his book. So we will get PSD files from him instead of a bunch of sketches we have to digitise and make look nice. This is its own reward, and yet he also gave me honeycomb!

We had Term 2 home group start up and a pot luck dinner (all the carbs ....) and I made loaded fries. They were nice but I felt sick from nothing but carbs for dinner. Really must eat more veggies.

This is what my tummy looks like now. I have a triangle of scars at the bottom and a row of injection bruises from the clexane on either side of my belly button. Not pretty.

OK! The first big hump of the month was the Tocal Field Days at work. The lead up is a bit busy and then it's a 3 day weekend of CROWDS and stuff. Just some photos to capture it.

Tiring but a great event. I have some time in lieu to take but haven't had much time.

I did the wardrobe season changeover! This is the winter stuff being aired. Note my veggie garden and the box I have over my kale, there has been a plague of green grubs this year. Normally kale is impervious to pests.

I had my follow up gynae appointments in the middle of May. Being examined and touched is a bit tiring. I rewarded myself with a visit to the nursery to buy plants, or lunch with Ros who came with me for the second one.

This was disappointing because I was supposed to get an IUD implant but my anatomy is so retroverted they couldn't do it, I'll have to go back and have a general aneasthetic to do it. The last appointment was also weird, because it ended up being a total accident, I didn't actually need it, but I did ask some questions and found out I needed 3 more weeks of clexane. Which is also disappointing really. I thought I had finished.

Mum and I went shopping, which isn't something we ever do, and I picked a watch for my birthday present from my parents, and mum picked a new handbag.

I did some garden tidying and bought some replacement gardenias to complete my row.

Our household garden spider.

This is one of the cutest photos I've ever taken. C started enjoying saturday morning walks with me, we have done 3, but on this day she stayed in bed and missed this.

I rearranged the furniture! I had to, to fit music practice for WOT conference in my house, but also it's nice to change, it makes the house feel new.

Mum and I went to a fundraiser high tea on Mothers Day weekend, for the local P&C, and we both bid and won sets of pearls!

I like mine, I have been wearing them to work. Pearls and a white shirt, very nice. Or pearls around the house just because.

I've been enjoying watching this lady paint on instagram. It inspired me to try palette knife painting, and also I wanted to paint something for Liz for her wedding, of a photo I took of the river when we were kayaking near her house this year.

So I watched 2 youtube videos about palette knife landscapes, and I got to it! First, sketch the picture in pale blue.

Then start at the top and work down!

Then go back and do the details.

It took all in all 3 hours. I was amazed at the fast results. So the next weekend I tried again! I took this photo at work near my car, and my phone was terrible at captureing the soft light and also the hills were really flattened and small in the distance, whereas when you are there they are close and higher. So I photoshopped it to be a more helpful guide.

And on this same weekend, last weekend, my middle sister got engaged! Her fiancee looks like a normal person.

As well as baklava, I also love crumpets with lemon butter and berries. And this stripy dress is in the process of being culled. I decided to wear it 5 more times and then OUT. Stripes are in fashion at the moment, and it looks nice at work, but I don't like it, I always choose another dress and feel guilty. So this is it's last season. It is 5 years old too.

One of the big projects at work this month is collecting content for the tour app for the homestead. I found out the fig tree in this photo is probably 450 years old! There are so many beautiful things at Tocal Homestead.

And then yesterday was Women of Truth, the end of weeks of organising the music team and the words and the sheet music and the practices. An email every night all month it feels like. It went well, in that the first session went perfectly and everyone liked it, and then we went downhill a bit because so tired and 12 songs (plus repeating 2 so 14 songs) is so many songs you just can't do them all well. The band was happy at the end of the day though! I had pulled people from different churches and different ages so it was a mix that represented the conference. And I was happy with the mix of songs, they went well and they reinforced the themes well. It was a job well done, and I'm glad it's over. I'm looking forward to next month and having some fun plans for myself on my weekends!

April, from rest to normal.

I had no time at the end of April to blog so now I'm struggling to remember anything that happened even from my photos. Part of the reason I blog is to take a month of photos off my phone to my computer (data management) and then I just use them to reflect on the past month and write through it. A month is the right amount of time. It's sustainable and also probably the limit of my short term memory.

I have come so far in 2 months! It's 2 months since surgery this weekend. So in early April, I was resting a lot, and I had some more visits. Denise came back, and Emma and her little Ruby pup. I started going for a short walks. And the weather was becoming Autumn. Started to get some foggy mornings, and roses.

Our church had a combined weekend conference called Grounded. Our old pastor Simon came and did the talks, and I really love his talks. It was a great weekend, I was so glad to be able to go. I underestimated how tired I was though. Standing and singing uses a lot of abs so that got too hard, I did the morning sessions and then crashed and went home, missing the afternoons of sewing packs for Days for Girls, and the evening games.

My online friend Bei En send me a parcel of a series of books, some tea and nice things to enjoy while I recovered!

So dumb to say this but I did watch a lot of Bachelor in Paradise, it was on 4 nights a week. Really good garbage TV. This is a direct quote.

I drove my car on 10 of April, I think I drove out to Tocal to see people for an hour or so, actually there was a fire drill so I saw everybody all at once at the evacuation point. And then I started going back for mornings of work and napping in the afternoon.

Oh another thing, I ate nothing but chicken salad this whole time. Chicken in salad or chicken salad in a wrap. A whole lot of chicken skewers that I cooked on the George Foreman. Literally 6 weeks of chicken salad wraps. And then late April I transitioned to tomato soup with an egg poached in it and sourdough toast.

I went and saw Julie play violin with her orchestra, had dinner with the Burgesses and D before. 

There was an epic yellow sunset with stormclouds.

This is a podcast I'm into for comfort listening. Simpsons episode recaps.

One of my surgical wounds got infected so that was a little setback to wellness. I was part of a study into hospital infections so I should have reported it, but I didn't, I just went to the doctor and got the stitches removed and some antibiotics, and then told the hospital when they rang up. Such a pity I didn't report it. They wanted photos and swabs and things, all I had was one photo I took to get a good look at it after it was healing a bit.

I have been doing a bit of organising, not like a campaign but spasmodically tackling different areas. I moved my meds into a bigger box and my oil paints and brushes into this box for example. 

I culled a whole lot of drab old grey and brown clothes that I don't wear. I'm into strong bright colours and black/white lately.

Looked for some baskets for my wardrobes, the kmart $7 plastic ones are the exact right height to the mm.

My garden has been producing a lot of rocket and spinach! it's really good! The sweet peas I planted didn't really come up so eventually I tried again and this time I soaked the seeds before I planted them and now they have shot up. Phew. Spring needs sweet peas.

I started getting allergic every night. I wondered if it was the furniture that hasn't been properly de-dusted in 4 years. It might have been pollens though, apparently they can settle in the evening and be worse.

The other thing this photo reminds me of is that on this day I had a rehearsal with a guitarist from another church for the music for Women of Truth. I was actually doing organising for that for like 8 weeks until the conference which was 26 May, yesterday.

Anyway, back to life improvements. I decided to finally buy a timer switch for the living room lamp, and I love it. I love that it turns on at 5pm every night so I come home to a lit house. I love that I can go to bed leaving it on and it isn't such a dark house. it turns off at 10pm. And I also got this powerboard for 6 plugs and 2 USB, so much easier with enough plugs in your life. This is the corner of the house where the wifi and TV is, so about 9 plugs.

I culled my paper file.

I bought this white shirt because the money goes to Ovarian cancer research.

Oh here is a lovely thing. I wrote a lot of thankyou cards! I ordered them from Kikki K and they had some on sale, I got free shipping too, so I think they ended up being $1.40 per card. I wanted to reply to the get well cards, and thank people for flowers and things, and it was a really lovely morning at the end of April thinking about how kind people had been and writing to them. I would highly recommend writing thankyou notes to people who have been special during significant life events. Dwell in the gratitude and nice stationary.

Some of the cards I added punched flower to, so they aren't so shop-bought.

JK and I went to a Persian cafe on Anzac day! Also bought Baklava at the IGA on Baeumont St (I have no idea how to spell) which is the nicest baklava we can find, and I'm a bit addicted to tea and baklava at the moment.

There was great excitement over the yum cha menu at Billabongs buffet! The calamari was amazing. JK and Ros and Rosita were in the first crowd to try it.

Some office excitement was we had a rat. It was walking around IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, breaking into our food in our drawers and everything. I had the pleasure of finding it dragging itself around with it's back legs caught in the trap.

And I started getting back into exercise! Used the 7 minute workout app, which is a good workout program actually.

And I got back into Friday walks, and lunchtime walks. It's a beautiful time of year and a beautiful place to live and work. I'm curious about this pole.

This is one of my favourite places, the Glebe cemetary.

My lunchtime walk buddy meeting the homestead horses.