The weekend that was.

Today, I get to work from home. Its just as well as uni starts again in two weeks and I really need to get prepared and back into a study routine. This next unit is one I am really excited about - The Making of Australia - at Macquarie Uni. It's a history unit, my other passion, a nice juxtaposition.

I have missed my little home office. Its been months since I had the bliss of being able to work from home. When I say 'work' I mean sitting at my desk, ready and able to answer phones and emails but in reality I am writing, or doing uni work. Its a great indulgence which I relish and have missed.  I have started to daydream about what my new office will look like ... hmmm might have to start a Pinterest board ...

The book has taken a seat at the very back of the bus at this present time, although I still collect snippets of information and ideas as I see them. And I guess the events of late have been adding fodder to the story. Dealing with a ageing person who needs to be cared for, physically working on the land, trying to juggle - life, not balls.

This last weekend was a pearler! (This word just cost me 30 minutes and $45 - I had to check if the spelling was correct for an Aussie colloquialism, only to find that it was not recorded as such in my normal dictionary. I found it on the Macquarie Dictionary, but had to get a full subscription to get details - which I didn't mind as it was a online dictionary that I needed anyway.) Now you can see how time just erodes away.

Saturday - we wandered out to WG to meet potential new neighbours (see post) and to start getting ready for the bonfire night. A staff member wanted to bring his brother and their sons to have a 'boy' day and let city kids run about and be allowed to be boys. They had the best time - moving a huge pile of branches to make a bonfire, playing in the stream without a mother in sight, lighting fires, using a blower vac to make the fire rage, riding on the mini digger and getting to make the bucket move, riding in the back of the Ute, playing with the dog, drinking coke and eating chips and Timtams for lunch. When they left, they thanked us profusely - they thanked US - for letting them move a pile of tree branches and stumps that would have taken Mr K and I, all day to move. 

Mr K and I reckon we are onto something here - get city parents to PAY us to bring their kids for a fun day out doing work and a taste of the 'old days' when kids had to earn their keep.

Sunday - Son#2 turned 25 today. We let him sleep in for a little while, then I woke him with his very own apple pie straight from the oven. Its become a family tradition and despite it also being Mothers Day, I didn't mind doing it - a day in my kitchen is a day of bliss for me. 

Midmorning - Back out to WG as we were meeting with the architect plus to mow the lawns and tidy up for next weekend. Any excuse to just be there suits me, even washing the dishes is a treat. The kitchen sink looks out over my white fences and green paddocks. The stream is running, the grass is greening up, the cockys being galahs, the dogs in doggy heaven - its a wrench to leave each night.

Soon ...

Planning that gets stuck at the Planning Department

My last post was about the thrill of planning, this one is about the pain.

Bureaucracy is the bottle neck to all progress. I understand why we have to have it, but this understanding does not alleviate the annoyance. 

I wonder if this shed got planning?

There we were, Mr K and I, all excited and full of wild ideas and verbalising our imaginations when Big Brother, aka Government in all its forms, Local, State, Federal, stepped in to be the spoilsport parent. Apparently, you have to get permission to even think about building, let alone the doing part.

I do agree and get the whole planning permission thing. I know it's for my safety that the construction is safe and engineered, but to take 3 months just to approve a shed is beyond my comprehension. A prefabricated machinery shed, one that is put together by professional shed builders, on a concrete slab, on rural land, takes 3+ months to get permission to erect. I bet the old boys who built pole and corrugated iron sheds that still stand 150 years later would roll in their graves if they heard this.

But, we are no exception, so we must comply with the law. Plans have to be submitted to the Shire, the fee paid and the waiting done.

We want to build a good sized shed that will house all the toys machinery Mr K is accumulating, as well as a dry, lockable place to store building materials when the time comes to build the extension. 

Kind of the shed we want ... except it will have 3 roller doors, and will be off white

It will be constructed right next to my dressage arena, so it needs to look nice and match my lovely white (well once white, now ever so slightly bore stained yellow) fences. I have a red geranium that I saved a cutting from a horse property I admired a few years back that will be the icing on the cake for this area.

In an ideal world my dressage arena would have these as markers!

The dreaming hasn't stopped while we wait for the shed permission. Last weekend we were out there with my folks and Mr K's dad, overflow accommodation for the country people up in the city for my sons engagement. It was wonderful to share with the special people in our lives, our enthusiasm and dreams for this property. Even more wonderful that they share our belief that this is truly a magical place and they all love to stoke fires!

The stump burning fire ... the fire you have when you haven't got permission from the shire to have a fire.  We had this stump in the middle of the driveway that had to go, officer.