Sometimes when I blog it is on a bad day, events are dramas, life is traumatic and I am suffering. Sometimes I blog about the big events and life seems super-sized for the occassion. Other times I like to just blog about life as we live it here, in our suburb, on the east coast of Australia, 50 or so miles north of Sydney.

Today is a typical not-much-to-do Saturday. I had a free Saturday because I thought I had a barbecue to go to with the WAGS group, as it turned out I had the date wrong and as I had turned down another invitation that left today free. It is a nice mild, spring day, fine , sunny, one of those days when you could go anywhere you wanted but it's nice some days to just have a lazy day so I decided that packing a picnic and driving was not what I wanted to do.

Our local shopping centre (mall) was having a Sale Day so we went there. On a small income an opportunity to pick up a few bargains is always welcome. Discounted jewellery and watches, teen fashions, shoes and handbags etc I wasn't in the market for but the shop I love for it's fashions for the "mature figure" was having 50% off new spring fashions so I managed to get myself a couple of nice outfits to wear to BBQs and out door functions without breaking the bank. Just as well that was early in the piece because I managed to spill a cup of black coffee down the front of me and finished up wearing one of them! I was waving to a friend and gave my cup a glancing blow and all over me it went. GEEEZ, was I mad with myself.

Because of the Sale Day we actually saw a few aquaintances who stopped for a chat so when lunchtime came we were still there and had a light lunch. For Ray a few people coming over for a chat is a really good thing. Each person brings an opportunuity for shared memories and although it is me now that tells the story and not him he nods and smiles and participates as best he can in what it going on. It is a social event that we have not had to engineer, a breaking out from the isolation that sometimes threatens to overcome us. It makes me feel as if we are still able to make it in the real world.

This afternoon we watched the opera "Romeo and Juliet", Juliet was a little "mature" but the singing was lovely and the settling a castle on the Rhine so I enjoyed it. The power of television, bringing a German opera with a French cast into a living room in Australia. Ray of course did his find-a-word puzzles and just occassionally glanced at the screen but that is okay, at least we were there together.

I just finished a long phone call from my uncle in Canada, he lives in Ontario, his two children, a daughter my age lives 75 miles away, she is a nurse, his son lives in Regina, four hours flight away. My uncle enjoys ringing his many nieces and nephews all over the world and we are always pleased to hear from him. The telephone and the computer allow us to keep in touch. He always has news of some of my English cousins too so there is always a lovely family feel to the conversation. If we can't be with him at least the phone call brings us together for 45 minutes or so every few months. It is a regret that I never got the trip to Canada we had planned for June 2000 because of Ray having the strokes in 1999. But regrets we have to live with.

The rest of the day will be reading, writing letters, making an evening meal. I don't intend to do any housework, I do plenty of that through the week. The past week was busy, two days without the car meant I got a start on the Spring cleaning, did some re-arranging the furniture. The sun comes in a different angle in summer so the couch goes from the window area to the back of the living room, I change the curtains, re-arrange some of the nic-nacs, you know the sort of thing. I like to have some stand-down time if I have the opportunity, I am needing that more and more as I age.

Like Juliet I am not content always with what I have. But Ray and I have been together a long time. I have been looking after him for eight years and although that has had it's difficult moments I mostly wouldn't swap my life for anyone else's. I don't know if that is acceptance but it has that feel for me.