5th April

Just sitting at the front desk (at work)  and the phone has stopped ringing, so I thought I would do a bit of blogging in the boss's time.

This is the first day that Sally has been left alone all day. She is so funny because she obviously comes down and watches the world go by at the front door. I occasionally hear her bark- that  "you've forgotten me" bark. She did have a visit from Steve and the wardrobe installers who  delivered the doors. Sally has trouble  with orientation. She doesn't seem to know what floor she is on. She knows Lester is coming into the lounge area and she looks up the stairs to see him but he is actually coming from downstairs. I assume she will get it sorted soon.

Establishing new routines has been fun. We all get up at the crqack of dawn and walk around the beachfront from Newcastle beach to Nobbys and then cut back through the  Foreshore Park and the East End. Yes, you cynics - even I am doing this!  We have now cooked various meals on the cooktop and in the oven. We play with all the appliances but the really cool one is the roof window in the bathroom. It kept shutting itself yesterday morning and Lester announced that it was broken. However, five minutes later there was a downpour. It shuts automatically when there is rain about. Who needs a barometer when you have a smart window? I just have to race upstairs and check the bathroom window if I want ot know if it is going to rain. Ha Ha!

There are still seven things to be finished by the builders. These include things like, the awning on the roof and the completion of the painting (can't do that when it is raining). The curtain man is arriving this afternoon to make some installations. The one really stupid mistake we made on leaving Stockton was to bring over our old floral lounges. They were so massive that they filled the whole space. So I rang the removalist and gotr him to ship them back to Stockton (where they didn't look big at all.) They had a nice little ride across the river and back. We bought another smaller lounge for downstairs. It has a pull out inner spring mattress, so there are places for children to sleep - even returning wanderers from India who will be popping in for a day or two soon.

There is still a bit of cleaning to do in the new place; not dirt but shavings and builders' rubbings etc. But it is not like cleaning Stockton. That took two whole days and I swear I washed about ten kilometres of skirting boards in that house.

I was talking to Emma about the five most stressful things we face in life and moving house is one of those. (I think I have mentioned this before.) So I am doing a bit of reflecting on this now. It is funny because I cannot really remember the details of moving to Stockton, of packing or dealing with four little kids. So that mustn't have been stressful. I actually think that this might have been a little bit more stressful - those were hard days in the Sebel and there still remains uncertainty about the whereabouts of items of clothing, cooking utensils etc.  And there is the ever increasing problem of deciding which of the local restaurants we will patronise - they are all within walking distance and the choices become a bit hard: Italian, Spanish, Modern Australian...really stresssful stuff.

I have more photos coming - best get back to work now...