Hello again!
I've been away from blogland for ages!
But here I am, sneaking in a quick post now that I'm back at my old paper, where I've just done a week's work filling in for one of the sub-editors who's on holiday.
We've just put the paper to bed, so I'm taking a few minutes to let you all know what's happening.
We've found a gorgeous, rambling old house in the Menora part of Mt Lawley, complete with studio for me (yay!) and a gate in the back fence that leads to a private park, complete with towering gum trees and jacarandas. Absolutely perfect. You should see the birds!
Our US furniture is still on the ocean, so we're kind of camping in the house, using just the bare necessities from stuff we'd stored while we were in the US. We have five cups, five sets of cutlery, one set of sheets each ...
I don't have my big Mac back yet, and we won't have an internet connection until next month, hence the scarcity of my entries.
:: I have some sad news: my beloved old dog, Nipper, took ill in quarantine in Sydney and died before I could get him home to be with us again and enjoy the park. He died just five days before he was due to fly home to Perth. I still can't believe he's not with us any more. I was devastated by his death. He was 12, and a faithful, devoted and affectionate dog who was never far from me at any moment. He had a bed under my desk, he had another one upstairs next to my side of the bed. He followed me wherever I was in the house, even waiting outside the loo for me! He's left a big gap.
The quarantine vets were very kind and gentle, and said Nipper had lung cancer, which he must have had for months before we left the US. It had gone undetected because he seemed in such good health that there had been no need for a chest X-ray, which would have shown it. He had no symptoms, apart from his last day, when he quite simply ran out of lung tissue and died quite suddenly and painlessly.
He would have hated being in quarantine away from us, and I torture myself wondering if he thought I'd abandoned him completely, and left him to a miserable, bleak existence in a concrete run. I'd so have loved to see him in our big leafy Perth garden, and running in the park. But it is not to be.
:: I'm off to Albany again next Monday (after the first Dockers' match of the season at Subi Oval) for my Dad's 80th birthday party, and when we return, it shouldn't be too long before we're broadband-connected and in full possession of all our stuff.
Until then, I hope there's someone still out there!