This Quotidian Life

I’m on a roll now, so I may as well keep going while I have the chance.  I also wanted to put down for posterity the kind of week I normally get myself into.  This week seems as good an example as any.  First I’ll lay out the bare bones of Mon-Sat commitments then flesh it all out with a long litany of chores that get stuffed into wherever they may fit.  Please don’t feel obliged to read any of it, I am doing it more for my own benefit-  getting it all out of my head.  Having this inventory constantly swim around in there I think it is creating some whirlpool or vortex of horror, sucking me down to some subterranean tomb where I am stifled, smothered by a beast of my own creation.

MONDAY
9 am yoga
2 pm (usually) DH comes home early from work and we do stuff in the garden together
5 – 7 pm Bridge lesson
TUESDAY
Shiatsu treatment every second week (varying times)
3 -4 pm cycling with N
WEDNESDAY
Clean C’s house (in return for yoga and shiatsu)
reflexology treatment every second week
3.30 – 5 pm walking group
THURSDAY
3.15 Tutoring (2o min drive away)
FRIDAY
10.40 – 11.30 am painless pump class
SATURDAY
9 am yoga
Somewhere in there I try to fit at least 5 hrs of reading study material (my Special Needs unit has begun), but I can’t seem to make it fit any particular time slot.  This week I have managed about 3 hrs.  Along with:
  • meeting with the accountant
  • brandied and pickled cumquats
  • began the limes for preserving (cut and froze them)
  • preserved lemons
  • organised (made/wrapped/wrote cards for) birthday and Christmas presents for my dear Godchildren and their mother in England.  These will be posted today.  Sea Mail takes 3 months minimum!
  • ordered a load of sawdust to be delivered next Monday
  • organised my friend to order a load of potting mix to be delivered sometime next week
  • phone call from the insurance man
  • month’s worth of filing
  • half hour daily of journalling first thing in the morning (Artist’s Way Morning pages – haven’t made time to do the exercises for over three weeks now)
  • 4 loads of washing including all sheets and towels
  • phoned a nursery in Perth where my fruit trees came from.  Have been trying to get hold of them for 6 weeks (kid you not) to ask some questions.  Then my mobile kept ringing while I was on the phone, I had to hang up and answer mobile it was parent’s of a friend wanting to come over and look at my garden.  Spent an hour doing that.
  • collected loose straw from a neighbour’s hay shed for free, then spent about an hour having a cup of tea with her
  • pulled up old vegetables from about 3 garden beds
  • composted these beds, lay them with the new straw (which I am almost finished and will try to refill today so there is enough for mulching the roses)
  • planted out a few seed trays of lettuce, flowers (two types of poppy) leeks, onions, mizuna mustard and a couple of feeble spinach plants.  Still have two trays of leek/onion and spring onion to go.  Scattered some loose coriander seed around in the hope it would come up on its own
  • completed a questionnaire for my reflexologist about the program of treatment I have just finished with her.
  • researched and put the final touches to the design of the fruit orchard we are about to construct.  An espaliered job within a massive netted area.  Organised the man to come and rip the plot and auger the holes for the posts and the trees next Monday afternoon.  By then I will have to get the gypsum scattered over the area, so it can be turned in more effectively with the machine.  I still have to draw up the final copy of the diagram with exact measurements.  This is something I really don’t want to fuck up.
  • cleaned the upstairs loo and basin
  • vacuumed the large living area (just before the visitors arrived, luckily! It was looking like a cesspool)
  • dropped in on someone to discuss some business (yes, very mysterious!)
  • shopped
  • organised one of the cars to have a service performed
  • caught up on a backlog of emails stretching to March last year 
  • took some quick photos of the frosty morning
  • finished reading Death at Intervals by Jose Saramago
  • finished reading Is It Just Me or is Everything Shit
  • had a few turns on my scrabulous game
  • replied to all my facebook messages
  • researched gypsum applications rates
  • cooked lots of meals and did at least one load of dishes per day
  • had an hour phone call with a friend whom I haven’t spoken to in ages
And probably heaps more that I can’t even remember.  I throw my daily list in the fire at the end of the evening, so I can’t check back.  Maybe that’s a good thing.
I can hear a fox howling in the mid distance, the fire crackling in the room underneath (I am in the mezzanine above the main living area) and the dripping of melted frost from the eaves on the windows opposite.  I still have an hour before leaving the house.  I need to get dressed and make sure all the bins are emptied as I am taking the rubbish to the tip today (after pump and before shop/post/newsagent, where I will pick  up the weekly treat of Friday’s Guardian Weekly).  Then home to rustle up some lunch and some scone mixture in preparation for the lovely J and N who are coming to save the bacon of my revegetation project at 1 pm.  
Then we can all have scones and jam and cream and cups of tea and sit in the sun on the back verandah overlooking the babbling brook watching the parrots and magpies and the odd Australian Wood duck wander around the lawn.  And admire all our hard work.  And then if there’s time I’ll race over to the neighbour’s and fill the back of the ute with hay again and hopefully get home in time to have a shower (still outside – don’t ask) before it gets too cold. 
By which time I will be starving for my dinner and totally unprepared and will probably end up having leftovers of the roast chicken I made last night.  And then maybe I can put my feet up for a while and watch a bit of the Olympics.
DH reckons I would be a shoo in for a medal if house-wifing was an Olympic event.  I’m inclined to agree.  Anyway, you could maybe see where there really isn’t much room for a full time job. Come to think of it, not much room for kids either!  Ha Ha Ha.  Oh the irony of wanting something you haven’t got time for anyway.  I wonder if I am completely mad?
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