Monday, June 7, 2010

Lazy and Cool

It was a lazy and cool weekend here in Brisbane. For the second weekend in a row, we had guests in at Karra, which ruled out a trip to the island. Instead, Dan and I spent it at home in Brisbane.

There was plenty to do here. Plenty of really fun stuff like cleaning and painting and cooking and shopping.

Yeah, fun stuff indeed.

Dan and his mate Dave concentrated on painting the deck.

Dan painting the deck resized

Dave painting the deck resized

Dave on deck resized

I concentrated on the more mundane tasks.

You know, a few years ago, I never would have thought that whole weekends could disappear in a haze of scrubbing and dusting and polishing and cleansing.

No one ever tells you that you can spend years and years studying to get qualifications and a good full-time job with a decent salary, only to spend most of your free-time frantically trying to catch-up on the chores you don't have time to do all week.

'First world problem', I know. I also know that people out there do working full-time thing WITH KIDS - I have no idea how.

Frankly, I take my hat off to them all.

Don't you think it seems strange how little we factor in the time and money it takes to care for our homes and possessions when we think of buying them?

I just never knew that buying nice things just meant you had to work that much harder to look after them.

It never occurred to me that the more I acquired and accumulated and coveted, the more time and money I had to spend on maintenance.

I never knew that just deciding that you want a long-haired dog who comes inside in the evening would mean whole hours could disappear every week just in cleaning up dust and hair and scrubbing muddy foot prints from the floorboards.

Not that it would have prevented me from getting said dog, of course.

The more I have, the more frustrated I get when it breaks or the software needs upgrading or the bulb breaks or I need more batteries and it's 10:30 at night and I have an 8am meeting and I REALLY JUST NEED SOME TRIPLE A BATTERIES RIGHT NOW, DAN.

Basically, I never thought that buying two houses to renovate simultaneously (although slowly) would mean so much work, expense and frustration.

I probably should have guessed.

7 comments:

  1. Yeah, it never really dawned on me either on how much work goes into maintaining the things you have. I need a servant. Unfortunately, I am the servant and not a very good one!

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  2. My 'freak out' moments in the last few years have usually ended in me in a fit of tears crying about wanting to sell all our crap and move to live a simpler life in vanuatu or something.... it hasn't happened yet :)

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  3. Carla, mine usually revolve around mountains and cheese making...

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  4. ABsolutely love your writing -always puts a smile on my face! Great new header images too ;-D But what really took my breath away were the India images below. Stunning, absolutely stunning - what an exotic country!

    Wishing you a fabulous summer on your renovated decking!

    Helena, The Swenglish Home

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  5. I can totally relate to the "Where did the week and weekend go?" conversation. Working for myself at home and my hubby working a typical 6 day week and endless overtime hours, time seems to fly away! There is something always to do or chase up and never enough hours in the day to do it all! I have a single mum sister with 6 kids all 10 years and under, and I just don't know how she gets washing, cleaning, looking after kids, school activities, sport activities and time for her all done!!!!! I would need to be committed!!! LOL

    If only I could pause time, just so everything gets done!!! hehe

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  6. Agree, agree and... agree. The duties that occupy our hours that give us the rat race feeling, the feeling of never being done.
    I further have a problem of always looking forward to the next thing, or somewhere in the future. To enjoy the present is very hard for me, especially if it's chore related.

    Like your new header.

    Annelie

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  7. Now that we've got kids, I can't understand what people WITHOUT kids do with their time...

    Funny, that. Just as well I've forgotten those long hours with a book...

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