Tag Archives: day off

Even God rested on the 7th day . . .

by . Posted on
03 Nov

Eureka!

I have been going round and round my little house and the outer edges of insanity as well as riding a rollercoaster of emotions (none of them pleasant!) and poor Ged has borne the brunt of the hormonal hell so I sat us down the other night and allocated strict allocation of chores and suggested I have one day off my new life as Mum a week.  Ged agreed to have Saturday as his day off his life as a slave to the wage or the farm and spend it solely with his son and I get to do whatever I want as long as I come back and bare my breasts every three hours (for Ben, not Ged, obviously!!)
So I had Saturday mucking out my horses and mowing the lawn and pruning the lavendar bushes etc – bliss.  I finally realised just how trapped I had felt in my little cottage with my only excursions to the washing line and back once I had the right to roam again and the body that would finally allow me to lift and bend etc.  I hadn’t realised how restricted I had been physically in the last month or so of pregnancy and then the post partum pain and posterior pronouncements!  So all of a sudden I felt free to be me again and to do once more, instead of giving directions from my armchair where I was chained to my son and Little House on the Prairie!
And by the end of the day I understood that I really needed that day off – no wonder I was going mad!  And I have felt so much better ever since – it was like a door opening in my head and light shining through it.  I had even begun to wonder if I was going to be a post natal depression statistic.  But that beautiful day and 12 hours sleep have changed me into a much nicer, calmer person and we are all the better for me having Time Out.  And Ged loves his day of doing very little with his blue eyed boy so it’s a win-win for everyone.
The gradual healing of my body also makes me feel a lot happier – Macca says us older ladies do take longer to heal, but it is a slow process, and you know me, I am not a patient soul!!  Although I am taking Bush Flower Remedies to try and change that habit and I do seem to be slowing down, expecting less of myself and others and just doing what I can do and not stressing about the rest . . . after all, the dust and dirt will still be there tomorrow and as Scarlett O’Hara always said ‘tomorrow is another day . . . ‘

The Roaring River and Whales

by . Posted on
09 Jun

We’ve been marooned again!

My neighbour, local weather guru, and early warning system, Pat Henry, rang at the weekend to warn of us of a major rain belt heading south from Tropical Queensland so we were on the alert (Pat is spot on with her predictions!).  So when I did my 3am wee on Monday night and it was raining I poked my better half awake to remind him that he had his car this side and not to blame me if he was flood bound in the morning.  He wasn’t, but by the end of that day after relentless rain all day, it was obvious that the river was on the up.  I left my car in Wauchope because it didn’t feel safe aquaplaning on my barely there tyres and got a lift home with George and we just made it in across the creeks.  Needless to say, Ged left his car out on Tuesday night and we woke to the roaring of the river on Wednesday morning – 12 feet below the last one but still a very sizeable flood.  So we played ‘marooned’ all day, cutting a swathe through our respective paperwork in the office and when it came time to feed Ged’s horses on ‘the other side’ the pregnant lady set off, with faithful hound at heel, to walk with two full feed buckets the 2.5kms to find the horses.   Went for a brisk trot around the track (pregnant lady on foot!) and then walked back with four empty feed buckets.  Long, long way!!
It was Ged’s birthday on Thursday so I gave him the day off work (!!) and booked us on a Whale Watching Tour  at 8am out of Port Macquarie, so we had an early start.  There was lots of hanging around scanning the sea for signs of life, and several sightings of pods blowing and breaching, but still not close enough for a real sense of the magnificence of the beasts, so I adopted my positive thinking and stood at the bow thinking ‘I see whales close to the boat’ for well over an hour.  Sure enough, just as we were about to turn for shore, we had a ‘close encounter’ with 3 humpback whales right under our noses at the bow and I had my first real whale sighting.  Wow!  Imagine if we had all been practising positive thinking . . . .
Ged has had amazing up close and personal whale experiences at Hervey Bay so he wasn’t as excited as me, but we had a lovely day with a warm-up breakfast in Port and then lots of clothes shopping to update his wardrobe (and a few things for me, too, since nothing seems to fit me anymore!)  On Friday I was able to pick up my car with its all new wheels (lovely!) and drive across the bridge again so we have spent the weekend in the garden planting bluebells and snowdrops, drastically pruning the roses over the septic, and relocating trees (again!)
We have had the list of suitable species from the Catchment Management Authority and have a visual plan of what to plant along the river banks to protect the banks and create a haven for birds and even koalas – it turns out that those bloody She Oaks (Casuarinas) are not even meant to be in this part of the Hastings valley Catchment Area – so we are completely justified in our plan to chop them down!  It’s very nice when our vision actually coincides with that of the Government and the Greenies (Melissa will be proud of us!)
Still waiting for Paddy to pop  . . . !