Rasita My Family, My Animals, My Food

Being the good citizen that i am, every 3 or so months, i give blood. I go with friends and make it a girlie outing, even though we do go in separately.
This time was a little different as one was out sick and the husband of another came along. Nice guy and i have no problem with the men coming either.
This time, i met an neighbour from my childhood. It was a good meeting as he, and his wife and kids, were good neighbours. It had been probably about 16 years since i last saw him. I was surprised that i could remember his name, and he mine, and the fact he still looked the same as he did 16 years ago.
It was good to catch up with him in that short visit at the blood bank (he was there bleeding also).
During the bleeding the technicians took good care of my 12 yr old and plied her with sweets, muffins and juice!

Distraction is going to the kitchen to see what there is to make for dinner, only to then search for something to eat and find nothing.

Then it is heading to the laundry to see if there is anything good in the freezer to realise the laundry needs doing and put that on, while completely forgetting about dinner and an afternoon snack.

Then you wonder what other laundry needs doing and head to the kids bathroom only to discover it is grubby so you grab the nearest cloth and give it a quick wipe over which leaves streaks and smudges.

While on the way to get another cloth you remember dinner and start rummaging through the freezer, plop that on the bench to defrost and discover the dishes aren’t yet done.

Then it is time to round up the kids after realising the pets are hungry and needs feeding/shifting. While outside you realise the yard needs tidying up.

This is when you get back on track, rounding up the kids, sending them off on various different jobs around the house, including the smudgy bathroom, dirty dishes and messy yard.

An hour later and…

Dinner is out defrosting, kids have done jobs, kitchen is getting cleaned and laundry is going. The smudgy bathroom sparkles, animals are fed, the yard is tidy and I have just scrubbed dirty marks off the walls.

I only went to find something for dinner too!

Maybe I am going through an early mid-life crisis, or maybe I am growing up, or maybe I want change more then I used to, but I have a lot of questions at the moment, about the life that I live in.

Some of those questions are

One thing I have been thinking about a lot lately was material goods and wealth. The stuff we can see and touch, that can get destroyed so easily and replaced just as easily.

During the recent floods, we got off pretty lightly with only a few things flood/rain damaged and this was because of the lay of the land and how the water flowed. It flowed onto the patio and partially into the garage/office. Out of the things that got damaged and need to be thrown out, I am not overly worried about. They are, after all, just things. Things we have wanted but not necessarily needed. Some of the reptile enclosures/stands need replacing, and this is annoying, but as we have discovered, we have been able to do without these extra things.

We also have boxes of things which have been unopened since we last moved (almost 4 months ago). How much of them do we need? How much of those packed things have we actually missed and would continue to miss? I must admit to wanting to use my food processor a few times but not wanting to unpack it because there is no where to actually store it. There have been a few other things also that I would have liked to use but haven’t been able to because we haven’t had the room.

How much of this stuff that we carry from house to house, do we actually need? Wouldn’t it be easier to just get rid of a lot of it and live a less cluttered life?

Rain, it is inundating QLD at the moment. It started out west with the flooding and now it is coming closer to the coast. People are having to evacuate their homes, and their towns. Leaving everything behind. Cars have been swept down creeks turned into wild rivers. People have gone missing in the flood waters. So much of normal life has come to a halt. Everything is wet.

We have survived pretty well where we are and have only lost a few things in the rain. All of our animals, stinky ones included, are now residing in the house as even the patio is flooding when it rains hard. We are unable to keep the water out despite the ditches which have been dug. And we are the lucky ones. We have electricity still, running water (from the taps) and a dry inside of the house.

Despite all of this rain, the sunflowers are blooming and bringing a bit of beauty to the grey of the constant heavy rain. They are the only thing which has survived in our flooded garden beds, and for this I am happy. They provide a light and bright focal point among the drizzle and wet.