Known Unknowns

Sometimes it seems as if life just happens to me, and I'm just going along for the ride. That's kind of how I'm feeling right now - I'm not acting entirely on my own impetus, but on the prompting of circumstance.

This isn't a bad thing, however. For just over a week now, my life has been relatively unplanned, what with having divested myself of an office job for which I have to show up every weekday, and maintaining a fairly broad set of intentions - adamantly not anything I would dignify with the name of 'plans' - that I can undertake as and when the mood takes me. As of today, and probably for the next couple of weeks, I am more or less completely unplanned, to the point where I actually don't know, from day to day, where I'll be spending the night. This is actually a new experience for me.

What it has done is highlighted a couple of ways in which I am extremely lucky. On the one hand, I have the means, at present, to have this experience in a way that is not difficult or stressful in a financial sense; on the other hand, I have excellent friends who are willing to be flexible and provide me with company and somewhere to sleep at relatively short notice. These are both reasons for gratitude.

I don't know how the next two weeks will go, but I am interested to find out.

Almost All the Things

Yesterday I updated my Facebook status with the declaration that I had done everything I had intended to do during the day. Once the update was posted and when I lacked the energy to do anything about it, I realised I had missed one thing - posting a blog entry. So this is my second one for today, just so I can retain my intended average of at least one post per day.

So what else had I intended to do yesterday?

The one real essential on the list was packing for my trip to Perth. That was in fact the last item to be ticked off the list, after I'd done the other things, and of all the intentions, this one required the least expenditure of energy - all the requisite laundry had been done the night before.

The two most time-consuming and energy-intensive activities were cooking a couple of stews to stock the freezer with homemade ready meals; and a couple of gardening tasks to further my progress towards turning the ornamental garden bed in our backyard into a functioning vegie patch.

So after a less-than-promising start to the day - the waking-up-at-appropriately-early-hour didn't go so well - I duly dropped JP off at work and headed to the markets for provisions. That done, I picked up a pruning saw and a bottle of vodka (that's honestly not as weird as it sounds...) on my way home and then finally had breakfast, at about 11:30.

Then it was out into the garden to attack the thorny tree that was leaning at a somewhat alarming angle and generally getting in the way of clearing the garden bed. I won't say the pruning saw made short work of it, exactly, but the end result was that most of the tree is now in pieces in the green waste bin, along with the satisfying amount of vegetation I pulled up. The stump will be a larger task than I had the tools for yesterday, but I did at least create enough space to plant out one of my potted tomatoes that had been happily outgrowing their pots in the spa room. The other two were relegated to the two large pots by the back porch that had previously been home to some French breakfast radishes.

It was then time to get on with the stews - one with beef and beetroot, the other chicken and green veg. They were both simmered at low heat, one in the oven, one on the stovetop, for a few hours, then seasoned, tasted to ensure an appropriate level of deliciousness, then decanted into containers, cooled and safely stowed in the fridge (to be transferred to the freezer first thing this morning).

Then I packed. Earlier in the day, I'd remembered that on my last trip to Canberra, I'd left my toiletries bag behind, so that led to a quick trip out to resupply. Somewhere in amongst the big activities I also managed to make some experimental herbal tinctures and also phone my parents and contact a few Perth friends.

So all in all, despite my failure to blog, it was still a satisfying day. And I slept better last night than I had in over a week.