Hanging in there

It's been three weeks since my last post.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

But I have good reasons for my absence.

I've been:

:: down to Albany for a week to look after my mum after shoulder surgery.

:: playing host, off and on, to Lily's boyfriend Nick's mum, Christina, and his younger brother, Carson. Christina took her boys and Lily on a two-week North-West adventure that started in Kununurra and ended in Exmouth, with helicopter flights over waterfalls,

camping' on beaches,

small plane trip over the Ningaloo Reef,

and diving with the whalesharks.

Lucky them!

I've also been:

:: thrilled to see Nick, and Lily's friend Jo, help Will to (negotiate the unnecessarily arcane process and) enrol at TAFE for the next semester. Will and Nick are both doing some fabulous art classes as part of a visual art course. Yay! Will's doing sculpture and drawing and digital art, all of which he excelled in at school in the US, so I'm expecting he'll be loving it. Yay! It's not San Francisco, but it is h-o-m-e! Even better!

:: trying (not very hard) to shake off a big addiction to online Scrabble on facebook, in which I have been soundly beaten by a man called Thor in Iceland, and Nick in Melbourne, and Tracey from Peppermint Land in NQ! Brilliant fun! I have won a game or two as well.

Hey — I'm in my mid-50s, it's good to find ways to exercise the little grey cells, isn't it? I also downloaded Bejewelled to my iPod this morning, while reading Jasper Jones, by Craig Silvey (review later). More serious addiction problems soon to befall me.

:: burgled — some low-life walked into the back of our house one evening while David and I were watching telly in the living room at the front, and before the dogs started barking, stole Will's iPod Touch, my purse, David's wallet, and David's mobile phone. Nauseating. And there followed days of cancelling bank, health and insurance cards, ordering replacements and new PINs, and re-scheduling automatic payments and all that tedious stuff.

:: helping Lily and Nick, back from their Kimberley trip, to find a house. Which they have done. Today they move into their cute cottage just a 20-minute walk away. Since they got back from up north, they, and Carson, have been staying with us, along with all their s-t-u-f-f, so the house has been fairly crowded and jam-packed.

I'm planning a weekend of cleaning and spreading out again once it will be back to just David, Will and me.

I've loved having my girl and her fella here with us, though, and will miss all the comings and goings. Today is actually a big day for her and Nick. Bet they'll be glad to be off the sofa-bed and into their own house! Exciting!

I've also been:

:: knitting, and finished Mack's jumper (see the post before this) and a second clapotis which is almost identical to the first one. I had an awful lot of that wool. Still have. the colour is, um, special, but it's a blend of alpaca and silk, which is irresistible.

:: sewing, and made a cuddly, rosy throw-rug for my dear friend Maggie:

It was the perfect job for the weekend we've just had here in Perth, with gale-force winds and torrential rain — wonderful! I missed real weather all those years in San Diego, where it was either grey and overcast with another bloody marine layer (spring there is trapped beneath what locals tellingly call the May Grey and the June Gloom), or sunny. Never too hot, never too cold. Never rainy. And they r-a-v-e about their climate!

Got to get off my rear and help with the moving.

More later ...