Just a lovely sunset from a walk I did one evening around East Maitland to explore the realestate in that section of town. While I walked I listened to the new four seasons 2022, and the Winter section played beautifully with this.
I’ll get the crappy stuff out of the way. At the start of July, it was raining a lot again which led to flooding again. It’s usually a time to goggle at the amount of water in the river, but this time I was just over it. Sick of the rain and tired of the flood photos. It was the biggest flood in a while so the highway and a lot of other significant roads had to be shut for over a week, and the queues around the back roads put everyone in a stress.
Tocal was the site of a fodder drop collection, so that was a new thing to see. Helicopter noise at work added to the drama for a week. Also in this photo, note the bee hives. They are set to be destroyed because the varroa mite incursion has spread from Newcastle to Maitland. For a while Tocal was just on the edge of the eradication zone, but now it’s been taken in. Tocal has become a field crew base for the response, with RFS fire trucks and beekeepers and government people descending every day to get their missions, and a lab to test samples, and the whole thing.
My car was in the smash repair for 9 days at this time. At one point they rang up and asked for the key to get the roof racks off, and normally that would be an annoying bother, but it was impossible to get home, get the key and drive it to the other side of Maitland during business hours. In the end I waited until 7.30 pm and dropped it in their receptionist mailbox. Picking the car up was a similar race against time between finishing work and them closing.
I also broke heaps of things, cleaned up glass twice, and one smash was the slow cooker lid rendering the slow cooker useless. I decided to replace it with a multi cooker, which does slow cooking, pressure cooking, air frying, searing, yogurt, rice and everything really. Good timing because a few weeks later JK beloved air fryer died.
Meanwhile work was really busy, I was barraged with heaps of promotion stuff and everything was happening all at once, so my stress levels rose. And, I had 2 cold sores in the one month, and I cut my finger. And my shoulder has been sore all year and still sore, despite physio. I started avoiding sleeping on my right side, so it doesn’t hurt as much in the morning, but not good to be disrupting my sleep.
This is me looking like I felt.
So that’s the bad news. I soothed my stress with a lot of real estate obsession. Lets now move on to the good times!
Expanded the music team - we added a girl playing drums and oboe earlier in the month, and at the end of the month we added a boy on drums. It’s been raising the anxiety for me, but I’m glad we can add them, and that we can train them and have that fellowship between older and younger people. It felt a bit hairy, but praise God we made it through without speeding up too much etc.
Heather visited mid-July because she had some work in Sydney, so we had a birthday dinner including my brothers new girlfriend - he’s been secretly cooking this relationship up all year and finally formalised it! We had also had a dinner to meet her. So two big family dinners.
I drove up to Brisbane with Heather, after I had my car back and after her birthday, on Saturday. We stopped at Woolgoolga for lunch. It was amazing to be away from floods!
And we stopped at our cousins at Tweed Heads briefly. Then we had dinner at her friend’s place and watched the new Persuasion.
We did her church the next morning, I was super tired so read and slept through a church meeting afterwards. Had a restful afternoon, I was getting pretty inflamed due to the stressful couple of weeks, so we watched the old thor movie on Disney, and the movie about the Guy in the game which was great, but I forgot the name.
On Monday I drove across Brisbane which was stressful, to the botanical gardens and Mt Coot-tha, then home and finished Heathers YA book I had started, then at night we went to the new Thor movie with Erica!
On Tuesday I drove to Port Macquarie. I had some traffic at the Gold Coast, but it’s a pretty easy drive. I went to Ricardos strawberry and tomato farm, and did the berry picking thing but they were barely ripe, probably picked out from the holidays.
Stayed in the cheapest motel in Port, which was very nice location but not a nice room or warm bed. So I went out with a book and read, the weather wasn’t great but better to be outside. Then I did a coast walk, and it was all worthwhile!!! The sun broke through the clouds for an amazing sunset, the beach was beautiful, it made the whole drive and cheap motel worth it. I walked around for a couple of hours, and got Thai takeaway for dinner. I found a farmer market just packing up which was a shame to miss, but I bought some eggs, and chatter to the farmers and their daughter had been to Tocal.
Slept in my puffer jacket due to lack of a proper quilt. But in the morning I went to the closest cafe, the girls were lovely and I had a beautiful tea and breakfast. I went for another walk and got caught in an unforecast rainstorm, before I refilled petrol (AGAIN) and left. I got home for a late lunch. Went back to work for Thursday and Friday, thankfully the pace was slowing down and the rest of the month was a better level of busy.
On Saturday, Mum and I joined Julia for a costco visit. I didn’t go too crazy! I wouldn’t change my life to shop there.
On Sunday it was Dad’s birthday, I went over for lunch, and gave him a special Japanese bread knife same as I have.
On Monday it was JK birthday. I had my car in for a service which I was planning to go in to work in the afternoon, but it ended up taking too long so I just enjoyed the rest of the afternoon. Anyway, because I was home, I could do proper things to make it fun for her! Her tradition is a birthday door, so I quietly blew up a balloon garland and attached it to her door. She woke up to it while I was out, but she was AMAZED.
I bought her a friande cake on my walk home from Toyota and sang happy birthday. We went to Tre Viet for lunch with Mum, and I gave her her presents - silver balloon dog earrings I bought in Melb, and a flashy light for walking Sweep at night. After waiting for an hour at Toyota, I came home for a bit, and then went to my first cello lesson for the term.
JK organised a trivia team at the bradford on thursday for her birthday, lovely fun. Won some drinks again!
Sweep was a disgrace, chewed this carpet. He hasn't touched it since he got smacked for it though. JK covered it with contact as per G's ferret proofing advice.
On Friday 30th, Julia gave birth to John Leonardo Davis!
On Saturday, I watched the Single Minded conference, topic was the body, most of the day, and in the afternoon walked to the hospital to visit Julia and John.
So that was a BIG month. Extremes of weather and mood and life.
