Week 25: Spring is in my step

(Jun 18 – Jun 24)

This week, in an effort to continue writing about mostly positive stuff, I will be writing about those things that put a spring in my step. This may be things I do every day, or every week, or it might just be something random that happened during my day to make that day shine a little brighter.

Monday

Monday is never the funnest day, but there are a few things that help me get out of bed. First is my ‘morning shift’, that bit of time I carve out for myself, in between getting up and getting ready, for my writing. Today I’m rewriting a story I wrote about a year ago, but could never quite get right. I’ve been editing it again of late and now have a good feeling about where it might have gone wrong, and how to fix it.

The next thing that gets me going is—surprise, surprise—coffee. We have an exceptionally good coffee vendor on campus. It’s about a five minute walk from the office, but the distance helps turn the mundane process of getting a coffee into something more of a pilgrimage. We typically walk down in a group and use the time to chat and catch up. It makes for very pleasant way to start the working day. Best part of all: it always ends with coffee.

Tuesday

Today I have no meetings. Not a single one. Not even a catch-up or one-on-one with my team. While my calendar isn’t typically booked out with meetings day to day, having absolutely no meetings at all is a rare occasion and absolutely one worth celebrating.

That said, it’s a slightly mixed benefit. No meetings means an entire day sitting at my desk with nothing to break up the trudgery except occasionally going to off to make a cup of tea, or going for a walk. On the other hand, no meetings at all is a rare enough break from the usual routine to be worth celebrating. And, as much as I appreciate routine, I appreciate even more the opportunities we get to break free of it.

In a slightly less fortunate, but unexpectedly comedic turn of personal ineptitude, I open up my lunch box later in the day to find … the Kinderbeast’s lunch waiting inside–a single vegemite sandwich and a baby bel. This is a shame as I was really looking forward to the leftover meatballs that I’d packed for myself, and which will now be going to waste in the Kinderbeast’s bag (along with a perfectly ripe avocado). I double check and, sure enough, have the correct lunchbox, I’ve just put the wrong food inside it.

Later, I find that I’ve engineered an even greater disaster than previously suspected. My lunch ended up in the Elderbeast’s lunchbox, while the Kinderbeast ended up with the Elderbeast’s lunch. Impressive. On the upside, the Elderbeast, albeit slightly baffled, did at least eat the avocado, while the Kinderbeast was far more amenable to eating the cheese and vegemite sandwich that he would have found in his own bag than the meatballs I thought I’d lumbered him with.

Wednesday

I wake up and the house is shrouded in fog. It’s awesome! Fog is perhaps my favourite weather phenomenon. Despite having had many fog warnings of late, it’s typically dissipated by the time I get up, let alone when I make it out of the house. This morning, however, the fog is persistent. I get a photo of the end of our road, everything white and hidden, then make time to stop at Bibra Lake on my way to work. The lake looks spectacular: the fog turns the trees into ghosts, and the lake into a scene out of a winter wonderland. My photos barely do it justice, but I’m glad I got to at least see it.

When I get home I have a long awaited package from Amazon awaiting me. It contains the fruits of the birthday voucher I got some months ago. It doesn’t contain actual fruit. It contains some UK release blu-rays of awesome films which are superior in every way to the Australian release equivalents, as well as some nicely priced Doctor Who DVDs to help bulk up my collection.

Thursday

So one of thing things I haven’t written much about is that I have a working oven again, which is hugely exciting. So far this week I’ve made a cottage pie and a cauliflower cheese, and have confirmed that the oven is behaving exactly as one would expect an oven to behave. It please me greatly to have access to these basic facilities (and, let’s not forget, these are privileges) of a domestic life.

Tonight I am using said oven to make chips, eggs and beans (only the chips are going into the oven). It’s my grandmother-in-law’s favourite dinner, and it’s a chance for me, in a way, to say thanks for everything she does for me and the boys each and every week.

Friday

It’s the first half of a double #chidlfree weekend—which is a complicated way of saying I’m #childfree both this weekend and next weekend. While I typically look forward to opening a fresh bottle of wine on a Friday night, I spend much of the day feeling headachy and potentially grim. I wonder if I’m finally coming down with one of the various diseases that has been afflicting the office. I start to feel better later in the afternoon, but I decide not to tempt fate and hold off on opening the wine, opting for tea instead. Which, of course, is the perfect accompaniment for tonight’s chosen viewing of Hellraiser.

Hellraiser is one of the blu-rays I recently bought from Amazon UK, partly because it’s a classic and came with an excellent selection of extras, but also largely because it has a lovely sleeve design. It’s a film I’d seen before, but until I rewatched it tonight I’d forgotten quite how many times I’d seen it. There were frequent lines, moments, even simple character actions that I was surprised to realise were seared into my memory. It’s another one of those films that I grew up on, but get to enjoy all over again decades later.

Saturday

I get up with a beautifully unfuzzy head (thanks, no wine) and head off to do the shopping. For the most part it’s a classic #childfree Saturday of cleaning, tidying, drinking coffee and watching classic Doctor Who. I’m also treated to a visit from a friend for the afternoon—we’ve been planning to complete our somewhat accidental, much delayed viewing of Kill Bill today with the long-awaited part 2. It proves to be every bit as good as part 1 and, once again, I could almost sit down and watch it all over again. We follow up our screening with some dinner, and I’m then left to my own devices with enough time to watch another film before bed. I opt, somewhat randomly, for The Trip To Italy (I loved it’s predecessor and had all but forgotten there was a follow up waiting to be watched). It proves an excellent end to an excellent day.

Sunday

It’s Pathfinder day, which is as much fun as usual, although our numbers are somewhat depleted—due to both real life absences and in-game death.

I realise as I go to bed that I’ve had a weekend completely free of headaches. They’re not a thing I have to endure often, but the combination of cold weather, heating, wine and late nights often means I’ll have a mild headache to tackle at some point over the weekend.

Watched

Read

Still going with Endurance.

Eaten

Well, what can I say. Another week where I failed to take adequate note of my dinners. Gutted, right?