Well, hello there! I love seeing the list of cities and countries that pop up down the bottom of my blog - it's actual proof that there is life on other planets...
I've been busy doing the usual frack, working, driving, sleeping... and yet more sleeping. I've booked in for a sleep study on Tuesday, after seeing the specialist. Lovely man, probably the nicest doctor I've ever dealt with. You know sometimes they can be arrogant pricks? Not this one. He took a comprehensive history of my sleeping habits, the increasing need to sleep at weird and wonderful times, and the constant tiredness. Words like 'snoring', 'loud vigorous snoring' and 'snorting' were discussed, along with the couple of times in my life when I've woken up feeling completely paralysed - it's a weird feeling - apparently you're actually not awake, you just think you are.
Anyway, the word 'narcolepsy' was eventually raised, along with the doctor's eyebrows, especially when he heard about me having to have sleep in the carpark before starting work (lucky for me it's an underground carpark) because I've barely been able to keep my eyes open on the drive in...
I try to go to be in bed by 10.00pm most nights, and the alarm used to go off at 0530, and I'd be out the door by 0630. Now, I can't even wake up till about 0620, and sometimes I go back to sleep and wake up at 0700, meaning I don't get to work until 0900. It sucks.
In other exciting news, I made a 1600 Quilt - using the very beautiful Lumiere De Noel fabrics from moda - one of my favourites. I've left it at My Lovely Ma's, because I'm avoiding the 20 year long tradition of Festival of the Boot at The Boxes, and I'm going back to Perth for another long weekend, leaving Poor Mr Golightly behind. Mixed blessings, hey?
And now, Gentle Readers, it's time for bed. Buona notte!
Hello lovely Gentle Readers. It's been a while, I know, and it's also been a while since I woke up at 0340, wide awake, ready to get up and go to work. Not really. I've had a very disturbed few days, with various things happening, including trundling Mr Golightly off to hospital to have his (very small) double hernias fixed, and the spare head off his back (don't ask...). He's at home now, sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room (close to the TV, doncha know), having some very bloated bits, and some very shrink-ed bits, some shaved bits and some bits covered in waterproof sticky plaster. He's taking pain killers. Amazing. As long as I've known the man, he's never taken so much as an aspirin, and yet, here he is, popping Digesic like they're smarties. Very sensible.
In other exciting news... well, there isn't any really. We had a fabulous Easter in the Hunter, where it was by turns, warm, windy, warm, rainy, and I took some pictures (I think)... we ate some fabulous food here, probably one of the most enjoyable meals I've had in a long time (including Italy!) - we sat outside in the sun, Az brought amazing wines from the cellar, and we chose the 'A Tavola' option, which means "let us cook you stuff" - and it was fabulous. We ate and drank for what seemed like days, but I'm sure was only 3 hours or so, and then crawled home for a nap (well, I napped)...
Actually, I lied about the exciting news. I rescued the house from floating away down the street today - we had a tiny weeny little bit of rain (around 80mm in an hour, that's quite a bit [there's 25mm to an inch]), and the drain on the patio became blocked - and of course, Mr Golightly had oh so conveniently incapacitated himself, so I had to roll up my pants and doff my shoes to go wading out onto the patio - it was lapping at the back door, Gentle Readers, and I very seriously considered getting the inflatable boat out... till I finally found the drain, stuck my hand in and cleaned out various piles of leaves, muck, wet spiders, and other assorted crap. It drained pretty quickly, but I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn't been home - we have two doors that open onto the patio, so presumably, the water would have seeped in & met somewhere in the middle of the living room???? Right where all those electrical cables are for Mr Golightly's pet project??? Short circuit, sparks, fire, no house? Ick.
And now, Gentle Readers, I am going back to sleep. I'm working from town tomorrow, so I don't have to be up at Sparrow's to miss the traffic, I can actually do the civilised thing and get the bus into work, so I won't be getting up until 0630, and leaving at 0730 (wow!)... and so... ciao!
Actually, Gentle Readers, when I originally wrote this, it was Saturday at 09.49, and I was still in bed. Gasp! I worked yesterday from 0730 until 1800, which was extremely foolish for somebody still getting over the after-effects of several hours on a plane (in a plane?) and by the time I got home (1930), I was, to put it oh so bluntly, knackered.
Anyway, the lovely Mr Golightly not being one of those husbands who delight in masquerading as a martinent, I did not have to set to and make a gourmet dinner, but instead peeled off my work clothes, threw on my sloppy house clothes and flung myself, bodily, onto the sofa. I did not move again until I staggered off to bed three hours later, having watched a repeated NCIS episode, an episode of something so deeply boring it's already gone from my memory, and an episode of "Person of Interest", which I am really enjoying, and I am grateful to those people at that awful television channel (which is so awful I won't even deign to name it) for putting on again.
I woke at 0630. Typical, isn't it, that having no need to actually get up & go to work, I am wide awake, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Ick.
That said, I do have some sewing chores to do, my lovely DSSIL Miss Mandy had a birthday on Wednesday, and Miss Emma, the mother-to-be of the incomparably named, but as yet unborn Linus Libbis, had hers on Thursday. I know exactly what to make them both, but... time being somewhat scarce this week, I have done exactly zippo about it. Ahem. Amends to be made, stitches to be set. Also, pictures to be taken and posted, but that's for after.
For now, some more holiday snaps - some of the things I love about contradictory Italy...
Ciao for now!
Would anybody hear? Well, Gentle Readers, let me tell you that when a tree falls down in our street at 0149 on a Friday morning, pretty much everybody heard it. And popped out in various states of undress to inspect, surmised that a) nobody was hurt, b) no property was damaged, c) no electricity was off, d) no driveways were blocked and e) no accidents were likely, becasue it's a flat road and the tree was easily visible. So we all went back to bed. Except for the new(ish) neighbours to our left, who came home at 3.00am, and decided that the fallen tree presented an immediate danger to life and limb (ho ho ho), and promptly called the Fire Brigade.
I have no idea why the Fire Brigade felt it was necessary to come charging through the quiet streets of Newport with lights ablazing and sirens roaring, but they did. They parked right outside our house, proceeded to set up the generator for the lights, got the chainsaw out and spent a very happy hour and a half (yes, it was a big tree) cutting up the tree. Sleep? Not much, really.
They finished about 4.15am. I get up at 5.30am. Cranky? You bet.
Anyway, here's the evidence:
And here's Mr G watching from the safety of our bedroom:
And the best part (I think)? All the foliage and tree bits have landed on our verge/nature strip, and so when it finally stops raining, Mr Golightly is going to go out & mulch it all up & put it on our garden. Some small measure of compensation for spending Friday with a brain like marshmallow, yes?
In other news, I finally got MaddieGal's pouches off in the mail to her - and I have bits and pieces of Mendocino left, if anybody's interested. It is very thin, and really only suitable for small things like pouches or lavender bags. Definitely no good for doorstops etc.
In other news, the crazy hours continue, 44 last week. I have vowed that I will not do more than 32 this week, partly because I'm off on Tuesday (yay!) and am schlepping out to Villawood to eyeball some upholstery supplies for my chair-recovering sojourn to Perth next week...
I've been doing these stupid hours because I've been on a few courses in the past two weeks, but that's all finished now, so things should settle down a bit. I now know what makes you a Leader, as opposed to a Manager, and that my GSI is mostly blue and a bit green with not much red. Gah. Amazing how much money institutions spend on this stuff, isn't it? Our Management offsite dinner was... interesting, for a certain value of 'interesting'. I was home by 9.30pm & asleep shortly thereafter. All that lemon squash!
And yesterday, despite my head feeling like a slightly overripe rockmelon, I went up the hill to help MBF* and the Kidlets strip the hideous straw wallpaper from her dining room. We found this underneath:
Any ideas who Ruby was? Me neither!
And that, Gentle Readers, is about the sum of my week. It's 13.32pm & I'm still in bed. I
still feel slightly like a damaged piece of fruit, but the urge to sew is getting to unignorable levels, and I feel some lavender bags coming on...
And so I wish you all uninterrupted sleep and a great week! Ciao!
*My Best Friend
So, Gentle Readers, here we are less than two weeks away from my return to work, and by work I mean the paid kind, the unpaid kind not garnering any kind of recognition in the universe I inhabit... and I'm up at 4.44am. Actually I woke up at 4.03am, but tried very hard to avoid getting up until something more closely resembling a decent hour, and failed. Obviously.
So, is it linked? Well, in the determinist view of the universe, probably not. In some of the more esoteric views of the universe which are out there, probably. I'm not really a fan of the 'everything happens for a reason' theory of life, because most of the time us poor saps never get to find out what the reason was, leaving us angry and frustrated. That's why I can't do the whole 'organised religion' thingy, because the fundamental requirement of faith kind of leaves me cold.
Anyway, I have had two job interviews for my return to the August Institution, and on Wednesday, at the worst possible time, I have the final interview with the Head Kahuna herself. Why is it the worst possible time, I hear you ask? Well, Gentle Readers, I was planning on going to Upholstery School on Wednesday (which is not normally a day we attend) to finish the Slipper Chair. I lost half a day yesterday to the Dentist (warning: TMI Moment approaching: acute periodontal infection), and I had planned to be there all day Wednesday to get the damn thing finished.
Well. The interview is from 3.30pm to 4.00pm on Wednesday afternoon, not in the conveniently located, only 10 minutes down the road, by car, Olympic Park. Oh No. The interview is In town. So now I have to leave at 2.00pm, take a change of clothes, change, drive to the station carpark, get the train into town, walk up to the office, have the interview with probably the scariest woman on the planet after Angela Merkel, then do it all in reverse, wasting at least 3 hours of solid slipper-chair time.
Let's hope I get the damn job after all that. Do I really want it? Well, no. But it pays well, the hours shouldn't be too demanding, certainly not as demanding as the last time I worked there, and as I'm only going to be doing 4 days per week, how bad can it be? Hah. Famous last words. I'll let you know.
Ciao!
