Chickafinty ~ A Life in the Laundry

Thirteen Years

Mister Bear and I have been away for the 13th anniversary of our first "date".  The date part is in inverted commas as the evening didn't start off that way.  We were going to a Youth Group dinner and we just happened to be going together.  I had never met anyone with whom I felt as comfortable as with him.  The trip to the restaurant took nearly two hours and we talked the whole time.  No uncomfortable silences, no points of major disagreement.  Once dinner had ended and we were on our way back to the mountains, it became clear that our minds and hearts were headed in the same direction.  The rest, as they say, is history :)

Once upon a time we celebrated every year, usually by returning to the scene of our Clayton's date, but since the advent of the small people it hasn't been as easy.  This year we decided to go away together, just for a night, and visit a restaurant we saw on Sydney Weekender.  The restaurant lived up to expectations and we had a wonderful time.

Satisfying

The threatened Colossal Clutter Cleanup has begun!

It started with our bed packing it in after 12 years and being replaced with an ensemble.  I emptied the master bedroom of everything yesterday and began a major spring clean.  It was so hot I could hardly breathe even with the windows open and the fan on.  I worked and worked and worked.  It felt good.

I:

• washed down the walls
• took down the curtains
• cleaned the vertical blinds
• washed the skirting boards
• emptied the wardrobe and cleaned/vacuumed the inside
• threw out three pairs of shoes
• filled two big garbage bags with clothes for the op shop
• filled two cardboard boxes with "clutter"
• dusted and polished all the furniture
• washed the inside of the windows
• washed all the paintwork

and I did it on my own.

Today we have filled another two garbage bags with clothes for the op shop and I am currently employed in emptying the boxes of clutter and putting everything where it belongs.  It's been a huge job, but the bedroom looks better than it ever has.  I am weary, but it is a good weariness.

All our clothes, shoes and bags are sorted and it just looks so good.

Now to repeat the process in every room. 

I am tired, but satisfied.

22nd June, 1996

It was a Saturday.

I was up at dawn on Saturday and at the carwash by about 8am.  I washed the car, vacuumed it, squirted fragrance in it and was home by 9am.  The rest of the day was spent in feverish cleaning of my two bedroom flat from top to bottom.  It wasn't a big space, but my capacity for spreading mess was as good then as it is now.

All day as I worked my tummy would periodically turn over with that heady mixture of excitement, nervousness, apprehension and joy.

You see, on that night, I was going to out to a youth group dinner with about 25-odd other people.  Here.  It was close to 2 hours away by car and I wasn't going alone.  I was taking a young man with me.  A young man from church who had volunteered me to take him.  He was sick at the time and not really up to travelling, but he was determined to go to this dinner.  In the three or so weeks preceeding this dinner I had begun to get to know this young man and I thought he was, to put it in the vernacular of the time, a bit of all right.

Eventually the even came around and I dressed with great care.  Jeans, purple silk shirt, natty waistcoat, brown boots.  It was after all winter and it wasn't a date.  It was a youth group dinner.

He arrived at my place dropped off by his mother as he was too unwell to drive.  (His mother thought that this might be an interesting "meeting of the minds" little suspecting that in a little under 24 hours he would be accompanying me to his parents' home and introducing me as his girlfriend.)

We travelled together and talked non-stop the whole way.  We talked all through dinner and we talked all the way home.  On the journey home it became clear that I felt about him the way he felt about me and we decided to spend a whole lot more time together.

We wanted to go to church on the Sunday night, and decided we'd best tell his parents before someone from church rang up and told them first.

His mum was gobsmacked.  She had no idea that the meeting of the minds had already occurred and that we were already thoroughly interested in one another.

The young man was of course Mister Bear, and within seven months we would be married and planning a very long future together.  That was 12 years ago and there has not been a single day since then that I haven't been grateful for a certain dinner in a restaurant so far from home.

Tomorrow

Mister Bear begins a battery of tests tomorrow to try to figure out why he suddenly stopped breathing the other Saturday night.  He fell asleep on the lounge and woke up unable to breathe (insert scary music).  Eventually he was able to take a breath but as you can imagine, it left us just a tad concerned.  Some tests tomorrow, some tests on Monday and hopefully some concrete answers.

How does this sound??

In what has become a Christmas tradition, Mister Bear and I are taking ourselves off for a night of unbridled passion uninterrupted sleep at a hotel in the Blue Mountains.  Since 2003 it's been our practice to nick off somewhere around Christmas sans children to spend some time reconnecting, sleeping in and enjoying a full buffet breakfast.

Roll on tomorrow night :)

He's A Comin' Home

We're leaving in about an hour to go and pick up a Mister Bear from the airport.  He's been in Melbourne since Thursday and I have missed him like crazy.  I need my bear and my heart aches without him.

Not exactly rocket science

Ever since Mister Bear began to work in an office I have been vexed by the issue of what to give him for lunch.

It's very expensive to buy it every day and we don't always have something of an evening that I can put in the fridge for him.

Then, last week, it came to me in a vision.  The answer is so simple that I can't believe it's taken seven years to figure it out.

A couple of times this week I've cooked a meal and then frozen between two and four portions in containers for his lunch.  We've also had a few meals that I've been able to serve out an extra portion and put that in the freezer as well.

It's not exactly rocket science and Ian's now got 11 meals tucked away in the freezer.  Two-weeks-and-one-days worth of lunches and I'll keep adding to them.

So simple, really.

A bend in yon road

Mister Bear got a phonecall today from one of the agencies he is listed with.  They want to recommend him for a BA job that's going.  It is the first "nibble" that we've had and it feels quite exciting.  Apart from the fact that the job is on the North Shore i.e. one train stop closer than his current job, it sounds quite good.  We're waiting to hear if the company is interested in calling him for an interview.   

Nothing may come of it, but it is encouraging that he's been highlighted for the job.  This was an agency that required him to produce a work sample within a time limit, answer a comprehensive questionnaire AND have a 2 hour initial interview.

In short, there is a bend in the road and we are both encouraged.

Raise your hand if you can spell....

PAYRISE!!!

Yep, Mister Bear got hisself a payrise it would seem.  A not-insubstantial payrise as indeed it ought to be after three years!!  Even the pension is indexed to inflation, for crying out loud.

I am so excited I could just about burst and I've had to keep a lid on it all day.

Yippee, Mister Bear!

Heartsick

and nothing can make it better.  What do you say when you've hurt, even unintentionally, the person who means most to you in the world?