Well here we are!

It's been more than a week since my last post, but I've been a bit busy. Last Thursday, the removalists arrived at our place in Sydney and loaded us (well, our furniture, and all our other worldly possessions) into a full on semi-trailer! Our stuff only took up half the trailer, though. And I thought we had a lot of stuff - actually, we DO have a lot of stuff, but in the semi-trailer, it looked really little.

We drove up to Bathurst on Thursday afternoon, taking Maggie the nutso cat with us. She whinged for the first 30 seconds or so, then shut up, thank goodness. She wasn't happy, but she was good about it.

We slept on the most uncomfortable air mattress ever that night. Maggie emerged from hiding behind the curtains to sleep on a rug in a wardrobe - she is a wuss!

All our stuff arrived on Friday, and we have been unpacking ever since. We still have a long way to go, but at least the place feels comfy and like a home, not just a house.

No photos today - they will come later in the week, when we find the cables that connect the camera and phone to the computer. The computer was one of the first things unpacked, but we can't remember where the cables went. Oops.

Usually I would be working on the laptop, where I can connect direct from the camera or phone without cables, but the laptop has some sort of ailment. We don't know if it is terminal, but we will be taking it to the computer place today to see what can be done, or if it has to be put down.

I am SO looking forward to settling in here, and starting this next phase of my life. I have surprised myself - for once I am relishing the idea of change, instead of fearing it. I don't know how things work here, or how things will go for us, but I'm mostly comfortable with that. Les and I are a good team, and we support each other, so we will be fine.

Transporting Livestock

When we were rationalising things in preparation for our move to Bathurst, we took a careful look at what we had in our back garden. We had spent a lot of time and effort getting it to a point where we liked looking at it, and whilst we knew we couldn’t just take all the plants with us, we had other, non-plant things that reflected our personalities. We had to look at these things to see whether they were things we could let go of, or not.

the offending rain gauge

I’m a bit of a weather obsessive. Dad tried to teach all us kids about weather maps (isobars, high pressure systems, etc, etc), and whilst not all of it stuck in my head, the interest in the weather took hold. Anyway, because of this, we have a rain gauge. It’s getting quite old (it’s hard to read the numbers on the side of it, which kind of defeats the purpose of having it), so maybe we just buy a new one?

We have a wind-chime that my brother gave me as a gift. The bit that dangles down to catch the wind has fallen off, so it doesn’t chime very often (some would say that is the best kind of wind-chime to have!). Perhaps I can let go of the thought that throwing it out would be an insult to my brother. I do like the sound of wind-chimes, but I’m sure they sell them in Bathurst, so I can get one there.

Yes, I know, I’ve wandered off the point again. How does this all relate to transporting livestock?

Well, we have a worm farm. I’m pretty diligent about collecting scraps in the kitchen so things that can go into the worm farm don’t go into the garbage. Over the years, I’ve used the worm wee (or worm tea, as some more delicately put it) and the worm poo (worm castings) on the garden with wonderful results. And the worm factory is a couple of storeys high now.

But, would you believe it? Les had just assumed that we wouldn’t be taking it with us! He thought it fell into the category of “just get a new one” when we are in Bathurst. Hah! No way! What a waste of all that goodness, and it’s needed for setting up the vegie patch. Nothing better than worm waste to improve the soil.

So, the challenge was, how do we move the worm farm? Pretty sure the removalists won’t take it. If they won’t take any foodstuffs where the packets are open, I can’t see them taking a worm farm. Once Les had accepted that we were taking the worm farm with us, he quickly got onto solving the problem of how to transport our livestock, and their home, from Sydney to Bathurst, in our little Corolla. Issue #1 – how to fit the farm into the boot. Issue #2 – how to not make an almighty mess of the car. Issue #3 – how to make sure we don’t lose too many of the worms, through them going walkabout in the car (can a worm do that?).

garden decoration that IS going to Bathurst

Issue #1 was dealt with by taking the legs off the farm – easy peasy. Issue #2 was dealt with by making sure the tap was closed tightly, putting the farm on top of things to have it resting level, enclosing the whole thing inside a couple of heavy duty garbage bags, with a tarp underneath. Issue #3 wasn’t dealt with at all. I suppose I didn’t really think of that issue until we got to Bathurst and found that some of the worms had, indeed, gone walkabout. Why did they want to stray away from where the food was? Oh, well.

But, overall, it was a successful move. We didn’t lose too many worms, and the worm farm is now safely hidden down the side of the house, under a tree, with plenty of shade, and fairly easy for me to get to from the kitchen.

I just hope the transporting of our other livestock (Maggie the nutso cat) goes as smoothly!

Rationalising Things

We are deep into the packing phase of our move to Bathurst. It feels like we’ve been packing for months! Each day, when I sit down at the end of it, I think that there can’t possibly be much more to do, then the next morning, we just keep on going. Does it never end?



the main bedroom - full of boxes
even the soft toys have been packed!

But I am grateful for this opportunity. One of the reasons the packing is taking time is we are not just packing everything, we are looking at each thing and saying “do we really need this?”. Both of us are hoarders, to a certain extent. One of us more than the other (I’m not saying who is worse, but it’s not me J), and that creates little challenges. But we will get through it. We discuss things, like rational human beings. We are rationalising things, after all.



It is said that it can be quite liberating to get rid of things that have been hanging around, taking up space. I believe that is true. In the past, I’ve had times when I’ve said to myself “just do it!!!” and when the things were gone, I felt really good.

a selection of the soft toys that have now been packed

An example (I love examples!). I have WAY too many clothes in my wardrobe, but only wear a small portion of them. Why do I have all those other clothes in there? There are so many reasons – I love the item and dream that one day I will be able to fit into it again; I wore the item to an event where I had an absolute ball, and just looking at it reminds me of that time; I honestly forgot I even had it; I think that the style will come back into fashion one day (who am I kidding?).



some of the shooter glasses, collected on my
travels around the world - these have been
given away

About 6 months or so ago, as the season was changing from winter to spring, I was getting out my warm weather clothes, and thought I’d rationalise all those other clothes while I was moving things around. I got serious about it, and before I knew it, I had several bags of stuff to go to the charity shop, and some that just went into the garbage. It felt really good to be getting rid of them. It felt like I was cleaning out the cobwebs in my mind at the same time as I was cleaning out the cobwebs in my wardrobe.

And making space for new stuff!!! Getting rid of things from the past, to make way for the future. New clothes, new thoughts!


Maggie pretending nothing is happening -
we won't "pack" her until the last minute

We are trying to do the same thing with the “stuff” in our house. Even the removalists have said that we have a lot of “stuff”.

I’m not getting rid of everything that doesn’t satisfy the “do I need it?” question, though. I’m keeping some things just because I want to. I am who I am because of what I’ve done, how I’ve thought and reacted, where I’ve been, and some of that “stuff” reminds me of that – how I came to be me. I don’t want to just give that away.

Well, that how I’m rationalising it to myself, anyway.

Can't Help Myself, Bad Habits

Habits are so hard to break, aren’t they? Just think about it. Usually these habits are developed over many years, if not decades. So to think it can be changed, just like that, is a bit unrealistic. It takes work, and persistence, not giving up, forgiveness for slipping back into that habit (and that WILL happen), and eventually, a new habit will take its place.

Yep, that’s right, one habit replaced with another! Mind you, not all habits are bad. Habits do get a bad rap, but there are many habits that make our lives easier, or better even.

my apple tree harvest this year
thanks to good teeth, I can eat them!

Take cleaning your teeth – that’s a good habit. It’s one that is instilled in us from a very early age. And for that, I’m grateful. It means that at the ripe old age of 52, I only have a couple of fillings, and my visits to the dentist are mostly just checkups. I don’t think I ever considered visits to the dentist as traumatic, until I had a nasty experience when I was in my thirties, but that was the dentist’s fault, not my teeth.

And for the fact that I have fairly good teeth, I thank the habit of cleaning them that my mother drilled into me. BUT (and of course there is a BUT), my teeth could be better, if I flossed. That was a habit that I never got in to. Maybe flossing wasn’t a concept back in the 1960’s. So I don’t do it now. I’ve tried to get into the habit, but it’s been very difficult.

 

stewed apples, dried apples, and still
a box full of apples!

Habits are physical things – things we do – but I think they are also mental things – things we think (or not think). We think about ourselves and others in particular ways, because that is the habit we have gotten into.

I don’t think of myself as “sporty”, because one of my sisters was the “sporty” one. I always played sport, but I never thought I was good enough. As a result, in my adult life, I haven’t put much of an emphasis on exercise – why do it if I’m never going to be good enough?  I kept up the exercise, until I started getting older and it took longer to recover, and injuries started to take their toll. But exercise is such an important thing, even more so as I get older. Yep, here’s that idea of being in good physical condition again!



my Saturday morning exercise class - and yes,
we are actually working out

Since I knew I had to do something to keep myself physically active (no more running up the stairs at the train station, to catch the train to work), I had to break that habit of thinking that there was no point in doing it if I wasn’t going to be good at it. It was stopping me from enjoying exercise, and stopping me from changing my physical bad habits.

I still don’t think of myself as “sporty”. But I have (mostly) broken that habit of thinking that I have to be good at it in order to enjoy it. I’ve found that it doesn’t matter what I’m doing, or how good I am at it, if the activity involves the things I enjoy (the people I’m doing it with are good fun, it is varied so I don’t get bored, it gets me outside), then I’m more likely to do that activity regularly – it becomes a habit!

So, I think I’ve pretty much developed the habit of thinking of myself as someone who exercises. As a result, I definitely have a habit of going to my exercise class on Saturday mornings. I still have the habit of cleaning my teeth. The habit of flossing, though, that’s still a work in progress!