A weird day

I was out of the house early this morning, to buy extra supplies for the Colorado family, arriving tomorrow. I am not a morning person and when I got home again at 9.30 I was bushed, and needed a cuppa before I started the cleaning. 

Dave had kindly washed the kitchen, hall, porch and bathroom floors while I was out, so what should I clean now? The fridge. That done I wondered what next. I am not a natural cleaner, and that is putting it mildly.  

I checked my messages and found one from faithful blog reader Sally. She asked if I'd watched the very last episode of Neighbours. 

You all know I am a big Neighbours fan. I started watching it in 1986 with Isaac when he was a teenager, and I've watched it ever since, apart from a couple of  breaks - the first when the village went digital and we didn't and I had nothing to watch it on. Then last year I had a short break because the plotlines had become circular and they were circling around a couple of characters I couldn't stand. 

But I have loved Neighbours: yes, it was tosh, but it was harmless tosh. And it has been a surefire way for me to relax when I've been mentally exhausted. I would watch the same episode twice when I was stressed. It even featured in the two Plotting books, Plotting for Beginners and Plotting for Grown-ups. 

"Neighbours is fab, and I love all the stupid plotlines – the amnesia, disputed paternity, blackmail, on-off love affairs, business wars, mistaken identities, manipulative ex-girlfriends, violent ex-boyfriends, people stuck down mine shafts, plane crashes that kill off half the street. And the characters – Paul Robinson, Karl Kennedy, Lucas, Jade – they’re like family."       (from Plotting for Grown-ups)

So after cleaning the fridge I watched half of the final episode, and it was mostly dire. The other half I'll save for tomorrow. I'm casting around for something to watch in half hour slots as a replacement and It is likely to be Grace and Frankie, despite the fact that I've already watched it twice.

After that I made brownies, which always cheers me up. And then I had a peanut butter and gooseberry jam sandwich with a glass of wine for lunch. I needed the wine. I'm driving Dave up the wall because he says - and for once he is right about my emotional state - that I am an unhappy mix of excitement and anxiety about the family arriving tomorrow.   Have I made sufficient preparations? Will they get here safely?  How long will it take to pick up their baggage? Will their cases arrive before the end of the week? And if all that is not enough I read in the paper today that car-hire firms are letting customers down because they’re over subscribed. Aaargghh.

So what now? I'm going to paint while listening to the sound track from Out of Africa, a sure fire stress reliever. (It's raining and it's a summer Saturday, so a ride up the Trail on my bike is not a winner.)

I took this picture at the end of the Trail, a place where I sit down and relish the sky and the quiet, the grasses and the flowers.