Rob and I  were so honoured to be invited to the celebration of our friend Grant’s 60th Birthday!

It was a small group. delightfully overseen by Grant’s wife, Ann, and their children (now grown). Ann took me aside when we arrived late, having just shared Tom’s 3rd birthday, and said she’d been very firm with Grant and made sure that he invited who he wanted to come, not who he thought should come.

Still with his arm in a sling from a yachting injury, Grant was happier and more relaxed than I’ve seen him for a while. All their children had flown in, and his own siblings, so it was truly and joyous celebration by the sea.

And good to share:-)

Email from Tim:

Dear Rob and Wendy

Thankyou for your very kind gift of the zodiac dinghy for Korek. I have

attached a photo of her maiden voyage with the new owners, who are very

pleased with its performance. I’m impressed with it too, its a beaut!

Hope to seeing you again soon at FSC.

Kind regards

Tim , Joe, Andrea, Ferry and Kimberley

Tonight we enjoyed Scotland the Brave.

The singing and music group that is! For last Christmas Tristan and Blaine gave us tickets to see them at the Convention Centre.

They were great! Lots of Scottish bagpipes, music and songs, along with some serious and some slapstick performing.

It all reminded me of where Rob came from – perhaps better than the pirate stock around Cornwall that’s my heritage:-)

This afternoon, Elwyn celebrated having her birthday in Perth (it was actually the 26th – last Saturday) by organising a relaxed gathering for late afternoon tea-early dinner at Kings Park. So, gathered around on the lush grass under the shade of the lovely old marri trees, we chatted with her friends and celebrated Elwyn’s birth.

And what an amazingly lovely person she is!

Today is 31 years since Elwyn was born. As she’s in Perth for once we celebrated with a little cake – chocolate of course!

Been an amazing day here, even by our usual standards:

7:15 Bobcat and men arrive to dig up the garden next to the drive.

8.50 Bobcat and men leave with appropriate mess behind them.

9am Blaine and kids arrive with usual chaos.

9.20 Fraser arrives to clean out the data on the PCs and finish

setting up the Macs and Netgear (internet router).

10am Blaine and kids leave for the doctor appointment – Thea’s

vaccination injection.

I make up beds for Fi, Tom and Thea with clean sheets and fresh

towels for Fi.

10.40am Blaine and kids come back for morning tea and Thea’s sleep.

11am Fi arrives from Hobart.

11.15am Blaine’s friend Ruth arrives and they take the kids to Kings

Park.

11.30am Fi leaves for Granny’s.

11.45am Fraser leaves, me having fitted in all the time I needed to

spend with him between all this. As he goes he asks me who is going

to do the Mac support now that we have an all-Mac office. I don’t know!

12noon Dad and I have a quiet lunch together before anything else

happens.

12.15pm Ruth, Blaine and kids come back and have lunch.

12.30pm Dad leaves for work and I join Blaine et al.

12.50pm Ruth leaves and Blaine and I put the kids to bed then have a chat.

1.50pm Matt (Mac support person) calls to ask if he can come now

instead of 3pm to set up the latest version of Dad’s medical

software. He DOES arrive now!

2.15pm Fi arrives back after taking Granny out for lunch. Having had

almost no sleep last night she looks dreadful and goes straight to bed!.

2.20pm Matt leaves, having told me all he does is Mac support so I

now have a Mac support person for the office:-)

3pm Tom gets up and has a quiet play in the back room.

3.30pm Thea gets up and joins us.

4pm Blaine and kids leave to pick up Tris from work then go home.

4.30pm Fi gets up, no longer looking like death warmed up.

No wonder I feel a bit tired:-)

This afternoon I was thrilled to share the 30th birthdays of my twin niece and nephew, Liz and Gordon Grzyb.

They arrived early in this world, catching their Mum Helen scared and unprepared.

They lost their Dad, Albert, when they were 18, leaving them scared and unprepared for single parenting.

Today their smiles and shining eyes, especially as they toasted each other, tell the world what truly wonderful people they are, and I am very proud of them.

Photos show (clockwise from top left): Christopher and Jeanette; Georgia (Gordon’s then-girlfriend), Gordon, Trishy Paul (cousin), Liz in the background, Sarah Paul (cousin), Jeanette; Tom having a well-earned drink after scoffing almost the entire olive supply (he LOVES olives!); Blaine, Thea and Elwyn (Thea LOVES chocolate cake!).

Here’s to Liz and Gordon!

Mum was on the phone today again. This time she’d heard on the radio that the Cat Haven was in deep trouble and needed a lot of money to keep going so they could keep saving stray cats’ lives. She’d decided that give them $10,000, and had called them to tell them. She needed to have a cheque arranged for them and as I normally did all her affairs she wanted me to organise the cheque. As she didn’t have a cheque account we’d have to go to the bank and get a bank cheque, and I couldn’t do that until tomorrow. So she called Helen and Helen kindly said she’d take her to the bank to organise the cheque.

Later Mum called again. She’d be in the paper next week, and their photographer would be at her place tomorrow to get a photo of her giving the cheque to the manager of the Cat Haven! Helen would be in attendance.

I’ve got to hand it to Mum – when she’s decided what she’s going to do she certainly does it! And giving seems to be helping her get over her angst from her heart attack:-)

I should have seen it coming…

Yesterday Mum was on the phone worrying how she was going to store the double grocery order that was coming today. She was in quite a state. I did my best to calm her down, then she remembered that Gordon’s fridge was still in the basement, from when he lived there. She could store the overflow there. Lisa the nurse was coming later in the day so she could help Mum get the fridge ready.

Good. She calmed down then.

Later yesterday she called in another panic – Gordon’s fridge was full of rotten food so she couldn’t use that! I told her to call me when the order came and I’d go down to her place and bring the overflow back and store it in my fridge.

She calmed down again.

This morning she called in a frightful state. She’d had pain in her neck and arm during the night, and this morning the people at the back of her had blocked the drive – well their workmen had – and so the food order could not be delivered. She was so short of breath that it took a long time to get all this from her.

I knew she was having or had had a heart attack! I told her I’d be there soon. Then I called St John’s Ambulance and they said they’d be there straight away. By the time I got there the 2 ambulance men had arrived and had Mum sitting in a chair with ECG leads stuck to her chest. The men never did get a straight story from Mum and she refused to go to hospital even though they really wanted her to. So they left in anger.

And I tried to calm Mum down.

After lots of talking she was calm. She’d looked at death and decided to stick by her goal of “only leaving this house in a box”. She wanted to be left alone for a while to recover in her own time. I respected that and left after having her repeat several times to me that she’d call as soon as the food order arrived and I’d come and help her sort it, and take the overflow back to my place.

It’s funny when she has these serious turns. I shut off my own feelings and just deal with hers. Mine come out to be dealt with later…

Tomorrow Elwyn is due to arrive from UK for a 4 month stay. Her room is ready, her bed is made. It will be the first time she’s been here since the cats died, and I hope she won’t find that too sad.

And now we are relaxing in the family room.

We hear the key in the front door lock and the door open- perhaps it’s Blaine and the children…

We hear footsteps on the wooden floor…

And…Elwyn peeps around the corner!

With that cheeky grin on her face that she saves when she does something particularly tricky.

The Jeanette laughs from behind her.

And Christopher appears with a wide grin.

Elwyn tricked us with saying where she was over the past few days when we spoke to her on the phone, and Jeanette and Christopher picked her up from the airport in secret today.

What a wonderful surprise…and LOTS of hugs:-)