It’s Monday and last week was quiet blog-wise. I ran last Tuesday and the rest of the week was voraciously consumed by hard work… not hard exercise! In the end it was all hard, so no sitting around for me. My leg pulled up fine after my short run with MGirl, which was pleasing. With her safely on the plane Tuesday afternoon for 5 nights the rest of the week is a blur of house work and yard work and painting.
I started getting up at 5am just so I could fit another hour outside into the day before heading off to work. I borrowed a high-pressure water cleaner and cleaned all the pavers around the pool area. It took me a few days of an hour here or there. It was quite fun actually, a methodical brain-less process that didn’t require much thought… almost meditative. I nearly didn’t bother with cleaning them, but the amount of dirt that came off made me glad that I did. The salt stains and some other marks didn’t come off, but they all add to the charm!
With the weekend just gone being the last weekend I had to get organised for my father and sister’s visit, and our BBQ the following weekend, I knew it was going to be full on! I got up at 5am to work in the yard as I’d bought some seedlings over a week ago and they still weren’t planted out and were struggling in the recent heat. I also had some moss rocks to move, to define a garden edge and general rubbish to throw out as the skip bin needs to GO! A couple of coffees later and the area I was working on looked much improved, but I still hadn’t planted the seedlings which had been the whole point of cleaning up the garden! I woke CBoy as the painter arrived at 8am to finish off the ceiling in the laundry and his bedroom. As the painter arrived I was throwing stuff into the skip bin, and wheel-barrowing left over sand to fill holes along a fence. He commented that I was a “hardy woman” (with his Scottish accent) and I replied “doesn’t everyone do this?” I just do what needs to be done, and he just chuckled and shook his head commenting something about his wife and headed into the house with his rollers and trays.
After a shower and some breakfast I left the two of them to it as I headed out for some me time… a haircut and some holiday colour! Then I went to the bank to try to organise a travel card for our spending money. Before I knew it the morning was all but gone and I raced home to collect CBoy and we headed off to his baseball game. They had a crushing loss… but there was no time to dwell on it as we had to get home and get stuck into the yard again. We did have a 50c McDonald’s commiseration cone on the way home though and that seemed to cheer us both up.
Cboy was such a help as we built our new BBQ (a little hard to have friends over for a BBQ without one). It was a little confusing to read the instructions; it might have been the heat, but I think it had more to do with the Chinese-English that had us stumped. The translation doesn’t always read very well, but with a few false starts we finally got the thing upright and bolted together and it didn’t fall down! We wanted to try it out but discovered our gas bottle was empty, so the test run will have to wait until another day this week. With that done it was now dark, and after a quick cool off in the pool it was time to go in for dinner. After a long physical day, that last thing I felt like cooking was dinner… I am still waiting for a Lotto win so I can employ a 6’3” green-eyed chef/housekeeper/pool fairy to lighten my load at home. With no fairy in sight, dinner was left to me and once I sat down that was me for the day.
I had another early start on Sunday, but I did sleep in until 5.30am… it was Sunday after all. Saturday night was so windy and with doors banging and curtains flapping I didn’t get the best night’s sleep. I had organised to run with MGal as I knew I’d been a bit slack with running last week, though all for good reason, and I needed to get another run under my feet. My leg had been fantastic all week after the earlier run in the new Ariel’s and, although I don’t want to say so prematurely, I hope it is back at its best for good now! Getting up early and dressed ready to run, I took my coffee outside and finally got to the seedlings, at last! As I happily planted I couldn’t help but get excited about how nice things are finally looking. It has been a long road this renovation and I’m not sure I’d do this again in a hurry, but in the end it’s certainly been worth all the stress (almost). It especially will be when Dad arrives tonight and sees what I’ve done.
MGal came running by around 7.15am and we headed off for our run, it felt good to be running again. The leg gave me a couple of twinges, but after that was very quiet, very happy. The morning was heating up quite quickly but running along the river meant we were able to hug the tree line. MGal has as hectic a life as I do with shift work, and we chatted about her erratic training for her IM in NZ and my program I’d (attempted) to write. We were looking forward to the water stop only to find that the toilet block had actually been demolished since I last ran along this way. And it must have been a while ago, as weeds were growing where the building used to be! We walked a little to the petrol station on the corner and managed to get water and a pit stop there. From there it was 4km back to my place and we pulled into my driveway having done 11km from my place, and MGal had done another 8 + 3 home from there. We didn’t run hard, and I forgot to start my watch so I can’t even tell you pace or accurate distance; but it was mostly about 5:40pace… a nice slow easy run.
The rest of Sunday was spent buying and shoveling and spreading and sweeping white sand into the cracks of the pavers! A little goes a long way, and at the end of the day we ended up with more than we needed and had to re-shovel it up and use it to fill up the bottom of some raised garden beds set aside for veggies when we get home from holidays! The day got hotter and hotter, and I kept getting into the pool to try and keep cool. To escape the heat I spent a bit of time inside tidying and cleaning up. By the end of the day I was exhausted; such a busy weekend and so much accomplished. CBoy and I both had another dip in the pool and then went inside for an easy dinner of omelets. Another trip to the airport later that night to pick up MGirl from her 5 nights in Broome! She had a blast. CBoy chuckled on the way there saying “we’ll be back here in 10 days to fly out again!” I thought to myself that it couldn’t come soon enough!
No comments:
Post a Comment