I Love Cats, Here’s Monday

Here’s my cat.

I just love cats. I’ve had a cat one way or the other since I was really young.

My parents always had a cat, so when I was young there was always a cat in the house. I remember when I was about 10 our current cat died and dad asked if I wanted to find us a new one.

So I found a vet with a list of cats available  in the window. There was one place with free kittens so I ended up going to see them.

They really wanted to get rid of the lot of them, but I only wanted one. And I had no idea which one. So they agreed to let me take the whole lot home in a box and pick one, and bring the rest back.

I can still remember tipping that box out onto the floor and watching the kittens going in all directions.

We chose one and called him socks because he had white socks on his paws.

So this is my current cat. He isn’t called socks, he’s called Monday because I got him on a monday. He’s being a little naughty here.

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Finally I Got To Wash The Car.

I got to wash the car this month. Big news huh?

It sounds silly. Why would you bother talking about washing the car? Because here it’s really dry, really really dry, we’re in the middle of a drought and it’s so dry we are extremely short of water. There’s water restrictions all over the place and one of them is a restriction on washing the car. You can’t wash cars any more.

It makes sense, washing cars really isn’t too necessary. You don’t need to wash a car to drive it or use it any other way. It’s just to look good really. But who really cares if the car is clean?

But it’s still nice washing the car. It’s nice to see it looking good again and I suppose it keeps the value up.

But here’s why I thought I’d write about it today. Because of the drought. We have tank water and so we have our own water supply, so the water restrictions don’t apply to us, after all it’s our water, and if we use it all up then it’s our problem alone. So we have to be careful and we don’t wash the car.

If you don’t know then tank  water is all about catching and collecting your own water. You get the rain water that falls on the roof and run it into a tank and that’s your water. It’s all stored in the tank and then you’ve got your own water.

Free of nasties like chlorine too. When I go to mums place and I have to drink water there it’s so nasty to drink I can’t drink it, too much chlorine.

But none in mine.

Anyway, back to the car. Last night we had some rain finally. Over an inch of rain and so suddenly we had water in our tanks again.

So this morning I washed the car for the first time in months.

It felt good.

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Cows Are Just The Best Animals To Have.

I really love cows. They’re such lovely animals, almost a half ton in weight but so gentle. I’ve never seen an aggressive cow. Bulls maybe, but not cows. Even my kids can pat them as long as they’re feeding them, the cows don’t necessarily like being patted but they’ll stand there and be patted if they’re getting fed. They just pull back a little when you try and pat them.

You won’t get to pat them a lot unless you’re feeding them hay. They like their hay and when the grass is short and there isn’t too much because winter is coming and the grass isn’t growing. But I have a good supply of hay.

Now of course if you are feeding the cows hay you’re committed to feeding them every day. Every day even if you’re not feeling like it, or maybe it’s raining. If you don’t feed the cows they starve which isn’t good. And if you are feeding them hay that’s the time to pat them.

I feed them myself. I like my holidays though so when you go away you have to have something to do so that the cows are fed. I do this.

I have various paddocks each fenced off. 4 in total. So when I have plenty of grass in the paddocks I lock one up and leave it with the long grass in it. Then when I go away I open the gate to that one and the cows discover that the gate is open and head in there.

And the cows aren’t silly, they know that there’s grass in there somewhere when they look through the gate so once I open the gate they’re right in there as fast as they can.

And then when the holiday is over I take the cows back into the main paddock, close the gate and feed them their hay all over again.

Right after breakfast I feed them their hay. They get 1 1/2 bales of hay every day but if it’s too cold I give them 2 bales of hay and they eat the lot. And they’re not silly, they know when feeding time is, they’re waiting right out the front of the shed for their hay.

I gave them 2 bales of hay this morning as it was cold. But it’s getting warmer soon and the grass is getting longer, it’s growing. And that’s good because my hay is getting short, I have a shed for hay and it’s pretty empty.

But the cows are smiling as the grass is growing and they’re soon to get fat.

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We Went Away On Holidays And Took The Boat

I have a small boat. Just a simple aluminum boat, about 11 or 12 feet long. It’s got its own trailer so I can tow it, I don’t need to put it on the roof of the car.

I took my family away last week. It was school holidays so everyone had the time off. We decided that we didn’t want to stay at home for the whole holidays so we decided to get away for a few days. 4 days actually, which was nice. It was great though it as raining and there was a really strong wind when we left, though that all went away after a few hours. And then the sun came out and it was really nice.

The resort was nice. I chose it because it had lots of things for kids to do. Kids always need to be occupied, so if you go somewhere where there aren’t any kids facilities then you’ve got a problem. Bored kids.

Bored kids can be the worst thing you can do for your holiday. They are grumpy and unhappy and keep hassling you all the time to play with them, when all you want to do is to sit and relax and read a book. Kids hassling you doesn’t mesh well with bored kids.

But no problems on the weekend, bored kids weren’t a problem. There were so many things for them to do, table tennis, pool, a huge jumping thingy that they loved. A swimming pool that was outdoors and heated, and they love to swim.

And there was a games room and they played in there for hours. There was this huge tv and every night there was a kids movie for them to watch.

And it’s amazing how something like a simple swimming pool can keep kids entertained for hours and hours. I can swim for a little while then I get bored.

But back to the boat. I took it for a couple of reasons. Firstly because I wanted the boat along with us, but also because I wanted to take the kids bikes with us too, and I cant get 2 bikes into the car. But there’s no problems getting 2 kids bikes into the boat. There’s stacks of room.

So it was really worth taking the boat. We spent some time on the local river puttering up and down looking at the scenery and having a good time. We stopped and spent an hour or so having lunch while the kids ate and had a swim. And we got to sit and read a book in the sun.

And the local lake was great too. Last summer I bought an inner tube and rope and towed the kids around with it so I brought it along this time too and they loved it just as much. In fact it was difficult to get them off it. They just wanted to spend the day there.

So that’s our holiday with the boat.

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Just Give Me The Country Life Any Day.

The country is the best place to live and I’m happy to say it even if you live in the city. If you’ve read this before you’ll see I’ve already said that.

But I didn’t talk about the birds. I like birds.

You just won’t believe how many birds there are out here in the country, millions. I get them sitting in the trees around my place. They have strong beaks and claws and they sit in the trees and pick off the seed pods with their claws and hold them with their claws and then break them open with their beaks to eat.

I love birds but it is a shame to see them damage my trees, and they do damage them breaking all the bits off. If you look under the tree you can see all the tree lying there. Well not all of it but a lot, there’s broken tree all around.

Mainly they’re parrots. They so colorful that I just love to sit and watch them sit in the trees. I even get them sitting around my veranda, sometimes if Im lucky I get them sitting right on the window sills. And they’re so colorful that I just sit still so I don’t scare them away and watch them.

Now of course you’ve got to offset the damage the birds do with the benefits of having them around. And as I like to have the birds I just have to put up with the tree damage. And so I do.

Its got to be so much better out here. Ill bet theres no birds like that in the city. Too many people to scare them off and no trees for them to wreck/eat from.

And as I say I like all animals not just birds. Animals are so great to have around, as good as birds. I love them all.

Its good for the soul I think. Having birds and animals around is a part of nature and a part of life. Its not sterile like in the city. Birds and animals for me any day. Just right now as I was writing this a whole bunch of them flew right past the window. I can see one of them sitting on the verandah in front of me right now.

Ahh, give me the country life, you won’t get me going back to live in the city.

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Good Weekend, But It Was Raining.

It’s all done, the weekend I mean. And was it a great weekend or what? I loved it, though getting up quite so early was a little taxing. Way too early for me.

I got up at around 5 am, really really early for me. It was way dark and it felt like the middle of the night. Wow was it hard to get myself out of bed, but I got out because I knew that I had a good weekend to look forward to.

But I got up, headed over to my friends place and picked him up and off we went. There was quite a bit of stuff to load up and the car was packed to the rim and it took quite a while to get going, longer than I expected and as we were meeting other people we had a time limit.

It was raining by the time we got there. That was a shame as it has been such good weather lately, the one weekend I want good weather its raining. But thats weather, you cant do anything about it can you?

We had to drive to the place where we were camping. It was raining all the way but by the time we got to stop and get out it had pretty much stopped raining, luckily. That was good as I don’t like putting a tent up in the rain, and everything gets wet trying to get it all into the tent.

And the speed limits were all reduced, grrr.

But overall a good weekend. I got a couple of fish so I had fish to eat for dinner. What a treat. Im looking forward to the next one.

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I’m Really Happy Because I Get To Go Away This Weekend

Here’s a treat coming up, I get to go away this weekend. What a great treat, it will be really nice to get away.

Its with a friend. My family couldnt come along this weekend so I get to go away with a friend. My family would love to come, but they all have some ballet thingy to go to and theyre stuck going to that.

We are going to take a tent and camp, as I would normally do with my family. It’s a really good tent, about 10 foot square and canvas and really good quality so worth taking. Its heavy but I have a lighter tent that’s smaller but it’s forecast to rain and I want a good tent that will keep the rain out.

I don’t like getting up early, I resist it when I can, but we have to go at 6 am Friday. It’s a 3 hour trip to where we are meeting up with some others, and we meet at 9.

As much as I hate to get up early if you’re looking forward to something you just get up and go anyway, so it’s not so much of a problem.

Unfortunately my car is pretty old and I’ve got all my fingers and toes crossed hoping it makes it up there ok. It’s done 540,000 miles so it’ done a lot of work, but it goes fine.

Saturday is going to be a free day. Nothing planned at all, just a hang  about day to do what you want. I plan to take fishing gear along and do some fishing, in fact I bought a new fishing rod this morning. Sadly I broke my old fishing rod a while ago.

I made a fishing rod many years ago. I bought a fiberglass blank and all the other gear and made it totally myself and I was pretty pleased with that. That was the rod I broke the other day and I was really disappointed.

It was a sad day the day I broke it, I’ve used that fishing rod a lot. And the silly thing is I still don’t know how I broke it, I was just walking through a patch of trees and I looked down at my rod and saw the tip hanging off. I have no idea how it happened but I was really annoyed.

It wasn’t as if it was worth a lot of money. It was just the sentimental value to me because I made it myself and I’d broken it. So today I went to a fishing gear shop and bought a new one.

New fishing rods cost, like, almost nothing. I paid about 25 bucks for a new one so not expensive really is it? But it isn’t the one I made.

So there’s the news about my weekend to be. It won’t rain will it and I will catch a fish won’t I?

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I’m A Cyclist, I Like To Keep Fit

I love cycling, I really do, I just love it.

I found cycling relatively recently. I was getting unfit and I didn’t want to be unfit, and I was getting older. I knew I had to do something.

I tried swimming. Can you believe how boring swimming is! Up and down a pool, hour after hour. Well actually it was probably never longer than 20 minutes but it felt like hour after hour to me.

Underneath you there’s a black line and you just watch that black line, there’s nothing else to do other than swim of course. It’s really boring and I just couldn’t keep at it.

So after trying swimming I knew that wouldnt work. I knew I couldnt spend 4 or 5 days a week putting some swimming into my day. Because if youre going to keep fit youve got to do it about 4 or 5 days a week or youre really just wasting your time.

And you don’t just swim for 10 minutes. You swim for a minimum of at least 30 m inutes. It seems that that is a minimum and you really should do more than 30 minutes.

So once I knew that I hated swimming I had to find something else. I also didnt like running either, so that was out. But one day I thought about cycling.

But I had a problem. No bike. Well I did have a bike but it was outside the shed in the junk pile and all rusted. Way too old. So somehow I had to get a bike and it isn’t cheap to buy a good bike.

So I went and talked to some of the people in the local cycling club and found out that there was a new recreational cycling group starting up and that I could join it. So I figured that all the stars were lined up and it was time to just go out there and buy a new bike.

And right from the start once I joined the new cycling group I enjoyed the riding. They varied their rides and did longer and shorter ones. But I did find that the pace of riding was not right for me.

Now Im not young, 52 actually, but even so I wanted to go a little faster. The ride was more social than a workout and I wanted a workout as well. Eventually I dropped out to ride on my own because I needed to ride a little harder to get a real workout.

The club also had another riding group that went out on Sundays and it had much better riders in it, some racers, and so I decided that I would try and join the Sunday ride, but was worried that I would never keep up.

Problem was I didnt have the right bike. I had a hybrid and these guys rode hard, on road bikes, and they told me that there was no way I could keep up on a hybrid. So I bit the bullet and bought a good road bike, and now I ride with them.Its great. A hard ride and I have to work very hard to keep up. Some of those guys are pretty good riders. Sometimes like this morning I get dropped and cant keep up.

But unlike the recreational group the Sunday ride gives me a hard workout and that’s what I wanted, I’m not complaining. Read more

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I Love Living In The Country, I’m A Country Girl Now

It’s the country that I live in and I really like it. Living in the country is a treat and it’s something that I’ve done for quite a few years now. I grew up in the city but you wouldn’t get me back there again.

And there’s so much out here in the country that you’ll never see living in the city. Here’s an example of my own. Cycling. I love to cycle and it keeps me fit which is so important. But it’s great for so many other reasons. It gets me outdoors to places that are so great to be in.

And riding gets you out where you see so many things that make it worthwhile. I love to see sheep and cows in the paddocks. Actually I have my own cows and I love that and I even get calves from time to time.

It’s just one of the best things of living here, I get to keep cows and calves. I love that and all of the nature around me.

Its Summer right now and its hot. Weve had some really hot days lately. Now of course if I lived in the city it would still be hot. But here I see the cycle of the seasons so well. I feel more at one with the seasons and with nature now. I see the grass wilt and die when summer comes, I see the grass regrow and get green again for winter. It see snow, I see drought, I see rain.

I see the leaves of the trees turn different colors, there’s so many wonderful colors. I see the new trees growing underneath the old ones when the seeds germinate. I see the old and the young, I see the new and the not so new.

I cycle and nature cycles. Everything goes around and I get to watch it all.

Maybe if I lived in the city I’d have a little garden, maybe even no garden. And I might not even have a tree. Maybe all I’d have is some concrete in my back yard and no more, except a BBQ perhaps.

Apart from the temperature I mightn’t even know what season it is.

Personally I think it’s sterile in the city and of course that’s just my view, not everyone thinks that.

Even the rest of my own family live there. My brother loves it and he’s single so I suppose he needs more social life than me, and there’s probably more social life in the city. But I don’t like it.

I’ve lived in the city for a long time, I grew up there and I really feel now like I’ve wasted so many years. Now of course I didn’t waste them I had my time and I lived my life but it feels like wasted time. I should ask my brother if he’d like to live in the country, it would be nice if he lived nearby. But even if I suggested it to him I doubt that he’d move here. Read more

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Now Is This A Great Day Or What?

Don’t you love days like today, I do. It’s just as I like it. Warm but not too hot, (I hate heat). And there’s no wind and it’s just ideal. I love it like this. I’ve been out in the car today and I’ve been feeling good. I drive along looking at the views and I love it here where I live. I see cows in the fields and happy people.

But what is a perfect day for me may not be a perfect day for you. Perhaps you’ve had some really bad news or maybe you’re sick or maybe you just don’t feel yourself today. It’s all different for you than it is for me.

But it’s different for you than it is for me. It’s entirely subjective and that’s why it may be wonderful for me and terrible for you. My day is the best ever, yours is the worst.

What is it that makes it a great day for me but is really not the best day for someone else? Why is it that I see the sunshine and the cows in the fields and the happy people? Why is it that you may not see these?

The best day for me is the worst day for you. Where I see good things you might only see bad things.

Surely the only explanation is that it’s in our minds, the day. We see the day through the filter of our minds. We don’t see the day, we see what our minds tell us the day is like. We filter the day through our minds and our experiences.

Its all in our head isnt it? Our minds tell us whats a good day and whats a bad day, because we filter all our experiences through our minds. Every experience we have is filtered.

That’s all a little silly isn’t it? But when I woke up and looked out the window I was thinking about that sort of stuff. Read more

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