TEN FREAKING DAYS VANISHED.

And for the most part I cannot tell you what I did other than work and a delivery run to Campbelltown with a stop at IKEA to pick up Kallax shelving for the studio. That is the secret IKEA back alley you see up there – make use of it and your trip will be a lot quicker!

I did manage to get some of the rainbow IKEA bags at long last.

Plus also work, more work, and work. Oh and we got tested for COVID – all clear.

Since we last talked, I have posted 40 packages, 4 of those international to the USA with a 5th to head that way tomorrow. TO ALBUQUERQUE I nearly lost it when she gave me the address being the huge Breaking Bad fan that I am.

And I anticipate more work as I now have three DHL packages packed full of essential items due to land in the next couple of days. Plus a website about to go live in the next couple of days. If you want a link to it when it goes live leave me a comment on this post and I will email it to you. :)

It feels like no time passed at all. I do not understand what is going on, am I trapped in some kind of Delorean but it goes forward instead of back in time? But I did get an awful lot of awesome stuff done, such as new shelving in the studio –

Plus all the old shelves went into the storeroom..

Just like that, a room I hated to go into at all because it was such a disorganised mess is now a pleasure to visit.

These Kallax were already here. There are two more in the house in The Other Half’s room. Everything business related now has a home and it feels amazing. And maybe this means once I launch the website I might have some spare time again.

But you know, today it all caught up with me. I usually go to a weekly craft group on a Wednesday and while we aren’t allowed to go back into the hall, the ladies set up a coffee morning in a local park, and groups of ten were allowed to sit in circles and chat and have coffee and snacks.

I was so thrilled to see everyone. It was such a great morning. Absolutely gorgeous day out. It wasn’t until we were about to leave that the reality of our new reality hit me like a freight train. I was able to keep it together until I got back in the car but I drove home with tears running down my face.

I think I have been so busy and focused on looking after everyone else – the parents, the other half, the animals, the business, doing what needs to be done in the safest way possible, the masks, the hand sanitizer, decontaminating.. it has all been go, go, go. I’ve had no time to think about what we’ve lost. The normal, the usual, the people we’ve not been able to spend time with.

I really missed those ladies. I wanted to hug them all and of course I couldn’t. But at least I got to see them.

And I really missed you all. I haven’t even had time to blog read, or watch teevee, or do anything even remotely like relax and catch up.

But the next 3 days are mine. I’ve closed the doors to take a time out before we reopen the studio next week to clients. I’ve got stuff to post and the website to sort out but I am quite determined to business only from 9-6pm for the next three days – the rest of the time I will be relaxing, reading your blogs and commenting on them, and watching some teevee at last. :)

Plus spend some time in this newly awesome space.

Well. I had got into the habit of writing down the days events each day so this post was all ready to post on Wednesday or Sunday. But holy cow, have I had a few days of insanity.

We make a product ourselves here at home using our laser engraver. And in normal times we do reasonably well with it, it is a big seller among our customers. Over the uni holidays last year I suggested to the other half we try to make some stock so he wouldn’t have to be making them quite so often, and we had built up the stock levels to an OK place..

But then someone ordered one of those items, they posted it on Facebook, it got reposted and reposted and went a bit viral. We’ve got over 40 of these items in the queue waiting to be made now. So pretty much all we’ve done for the past couple of days is make them or take orders for them, except for those times when I ran to the post office to post the ones we made.

I did go to Woolworths once on Monday to get potatoes, cream, bread and tomatoes for the parents. I dropped into the post office first and ended up buying 200 post bags – nearly $200 dollars worth! – so that I could just not have to worry about buying them all the time. If you buy in bulk you get a big discount too. But I hadn’t been expecting to do that and I had parked some distance away, and I had to walk with these enormous boxes quite a long way.

We got our donut delivery – all eaten.

I got a delivery of Bath and Body Works – they were doing postal deliveries now in Australia YIPPEE :) but now it seems all that info has vanished! I can’t believe it, I was so excited to be able to order and then tell you about it too.. :/

Oh and in amongst all of this insanity we have been trying to build the business website. I remember now why we stopped building websites for people.

I am going to post this and take a well deserved evening off, if I can. ;)

Catch up with these other folks blogging about our new normal. :)

Moving With Mitchell
Dkzody’s Weblog
High Riser
Stargazer
Dawn
Sean at Assholes Watching Movies
Zazzy
EssexHebridean
SilverTiger
Joanne @ Cup On The Bus
gigihawaii
anexactinglife

Should your blog be listed here? Leave me a comment and it will be next time. :)

Well played Uniqlo.. sending me this email on a day that reached a maximum of 13.5C. I AM FREEZING – this time I did put in an order. $19.90 for heat tech leggings is a far better deal than $129.90 cashmere IMO. ;)

As I begin this post on Thursday I can hear the other half giggling like a pig in his room, apparently at Happy. She slipped off his desk as a surprise to herself.

Cuckoo did the same thing not long afterwards from my footspace here in the recliner.Then the two of them did zoomies around the house, plus some hide and seek. They do play together, though one can’t always tell if it is nice play or mean play.

Just a quick note about Wednesday evening – I had to kill TWO spiders as a surprise to myself and I greatly enjoyed an episode of The First 48 which was just amazing detective work. Sheer brilliance on the part of the Tulsa detectives. I adore those guys, they are all superstars.

Thursday – out super early this morning to Aldi for my friend to do her shop. I played the role of The Other Half which is to wheel the trolley, unpack it at the register and then repack it. The fact that I did this with extremely long nails without breaking a single one is an achievement worthy of a tickertape parade. :)

I did get myself some little warm sock thingys plus extra milk for us, and I scored more paper towel, tissues and TEEPEE for the parents. A quick drop off of two registered letters at the post office.

Back home to quickly put the milk away and I was back on the road to collect the awesome food from a local cafe. When I got there the cabinet looked amazing with food I had not ordered so I grabbed a couple of extra things, this one I ate for lunch.

Mushroom, feta, and proscuttio tart. SO MUSHROOMY. So good!

A pie each and half a pasty for dinner, zoom chat with the people when all I really wanted to do was chill out in front of the teev and watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or Groundhog Day or some old familiar classic movie.. maybe tomorrow. Although I do have a sneaky secret appointment booked for midday..

Friday –

Off early with The Other Half to do a couple of deliveries and then drop in and grab a puzzle that my moving friend is making, we can keep it safe until they are all moved in.

Returned home to pack up 3 packages ready to be posted this afternoon at the NEXUS. Then off for my sneaky appointment – I managed to get my nails done today. I cannot say anything more about that! But extremely grateful and thankful for this and here’s a pic –

Dropped the packages at NEXUS, quick stop at ALDI to collect more warm sock thingys and a set of fresh brioche buns for a hamburger dinner. Then back here to while away my afternoon with work, Judge Judy and a fresh episode of The First 48.

Saturday –

Around 10:30 I got a message from my friend who was moving that day – we had planned to use the ute and Mum’s van for a box run later in the day – to say she needed allen keys for taking her treadmill apart. So I dropped everything and raced over without having put on my specially planned moving outfit. I was just in my regular house grotties.

It turned out I never got back here to change. While I was there I put all the boxes into the garage ready for The Other Half and I to move later that day. Then I took a carload of pets to the new house (my friend has birds, one cat and one dog) and set them up safe and ready for the day.

Then I went to get the ute, then The Other half met me at the old house with the van, and in the space of an hour we moved so many boxes from the old house to the new I still can’t even believe it. We were back home having moved everything by 1:30pm.

The rest of the day was mostly work and chill out time. I have been binging Helicopter ER. I’m addicted. What a great show.

SUNDAY – You’ll have to wait till tomorrow to hear about Sunday, as thanks to anexactinglife I took a photo every hour (or so, I did forget a couple of times!) and will make a special post about Sunday.

Catch up with these other folks blogging about our new normal. :)

Moving With Mitchell
Dkzody’s Weblog
High Riser
Stargazer
Dawn
Sean at Assholes Watching Movies
Zazzy
EssexHebridean
SilverTiger
Joanne @ Cup On The Bus
gigihawaii
anexactinglife

Should your blog be listed here? Leave me a comment and it will be next time. :)

I got an email titled “Work from home essentials from Uniqlo” – this was the first item in it.

SURE JAN I AM TOTALLY SITTING HERE WRAPPED IN CASHMERE!

Monday –

Had to take my high risk friend shopping, she really stocked up on the meats at the cash and carry. The parents wanted lamb chops and milk. I was not able to get milk for them at that store because they were closed for Anzac day and had not got their milk delivery yet, but I was unable to resist some of the cheeses they had.

I limit the amount of uncooked cheese I eat – it does bad things to my sinus – but I like to buy them for the parents, thus Holy Cheezus the title of this post. Because we’re pretty much set here I only bought some feta cheese and some ham for us purely because it looked great and was a good price and I was there anyway.

If they’d had more of the gorgeous bacon I would have bought more – not that we need more but I would freeze it for another time. Bacon is fast becoming the new Toilet Paper around here.

I had to go to the post office as well, so we did that and then a quick supermarket stop for milk.

Back home to work. Crushed pineapple, ham and cheese toasted sandwich for lunch.

5KM walk at 2pm, then afternoon coffee. Dinner was vegetable soup and cheesy garlic toast. Zoom chat with the ladies. My supplier contacted me around 9:15pm to let me know he wasn’t going to be able to ship my package the usual way as they have stopped all shipping for the time being..

..and then he said to me possibly the most beautiful word in the English language to someone still waiting for endless packages.. FEDEX. My reply was YES PLEASE!!!! Quadruple exclamation point.

Tuesday –

Today my aim was to go nowhere – donuts were home delivered super early (while I was still in the shower) then I settled in to a day of work, sorting customer queries, getting things ready to post, and OMG the last minute additions to my FEDEX package took up quite a bit of my time.

In the afternoon I did have to run to – you know, I need to give this place a name as Australia Post distribution centre is too many letters to keep typing.

I think NEXUS might be a great name for it – I took the packages to the NEXUS, dropped off doughnuts to the parents, returned home for a ZOOM session with my qualified adult, then my friend popped around to collect her donuts and informate me on her moving plans for the weekend – we are helping them move. Or I am, not sure if The Other Half will be free.

In my ZOOM session I asked my psychologist how long has it been since I last spoke to her – it was 6 weeks ago. It really feels like 6 years. So much has happened in such a short time.

Dinner was Honey & Mustard chicken with added carrots, capsicum and leek over brown rice. Which apparently we had to learn how to cook all over again as we normally just get the packets you microwave for 90 seconds. Brown rice takes 25 minutes to cook!

I watched Below Deck Sailing Yacht while I ate my dinner as the other half was watching a study seminar – shout out to my fellow Below Deck fan Sonya. :) I like the yacht but when it sails that kind of freaks me out.

Wednesday –

It is 5 weeks today since I got my nails done. They are holding up pretty well! This is why I prefer the tips only because if you just glance at them you really can’t tell they desperately need doing. Normally I would have them redone around the 3-4 week mark.

If I can make it so my only outing for the day is to the NEXUS that is a win in my opinion. In this case I dropped into the parents as well so I could order them some pre-made food for tomorrow’s market day. They loved the stuff I got them last week.

I did two work related pomodoros and really kicked some butt in those short spaces of time. The rest of the day was a lot of busy nothings.

Fish and chips for dinner, plus a Seinfeld. I hope you are all doing ok! :)

Catch up with these other folks blogging about our new normal. :)

Moving With Mitchell
Dkzody’s Weblog
High Riser
Stargazer
Dawn
Sean at Assholes Watching Movies
Zazzy
EssexHebridean
SilverTiger
Joanne @ Cup On The Bus
gigihawaii
anexactinglife

Should your blog be listed here? Leave me a comment and it will be next time. :)

From our outing on Wednesday – bushfire regrowth.

Thursday –

I had to run to the actual post office – for some reason you can’t send a registered letter online from your business account, only packages. So while I was there I attempted to get the very few remaining items I was unable to get on Wednesday – there were three for us, and one for the parents. Glen 20 was one, Aldi tissues was another, the final item was mushrooms.

The parents hoped for more toilet paper, even though they still had some left from previous buys, they normally have heaps more on hand. They are Costco shoppers from way back and are used to having 6 months supply in the house, in fact were still working their way through their Costco supply when all this started.

I managed to get all of these items and a local cafe was doing a market day so I went in and grabbed the parents a bunch of pre-made meals – zucchini and bacon slice, soups, desserts, and they threw in some free scones.

I came home and cut up my mushrooms – I now have 4 weeks supply in the freezer which is on the low side for me, I like to have 6 months in there! – and then did a couple of pomodoros, finishing up my business admin task which got put aside a couple of weeks ago for more pressing tasks.

We had a quick dinner of pasties with cheese and then I went to zoom chat with my ladies.

Friday –

The bliss of not having to go anywhere, not having to go to the post office or the dispatch centre, not having to run and get random groceries.. what a magical day this was. I got SO MUCH stuff done.

I had about two thousand dollars worth of new stock I ordered which had to be.. hmm how do I describe that process? Named and given a product code, then photos taken, then entered into the spreadsheet and priced, then entered into the Point Of Sale software, then added to the photo album.

Sometimes I am just not in the right mood to name things. I’ve named over 500 items now and there are only so many names I can come up with. But this day the names came to me fairly easily and when that is happening I know to just run with it and not stop till they are all done. I was on a roll and kept working till 9pm.

Not having names appear is how the above kit came to be named new kit 2. Yes, there were new kit 1 and 3 on either side of it. ;) I was completely tapped out that day.

I did squeeze in dinner which was frankly, quite epical. Baked potatoes filled with leftover savory mince from Tuesday night topped with cheese.

Saturday –

Started the day off with a great message from a friend who asked if I wanted to walk, absolutely I did! We did a 7km hike through her neighbourhood. It was absolutely stunning out there.

As we were on the home stretch my ring doorbell told me that someone was at the door – a customer. We walked a little bit faster and I sorted that, then we sat and chatted for a bit. My friend wanted to go to Bunnings but we talked her out of it because it was nearly midday on a Saturday and we knew it would be chaotic madness – we had what she needed in the shed! – and I saw later from someone else’s post on social media we did the right thing because Bunnings was once again packed.

Spent the afternoon doing the final piece of my process – uploading the things to the photo album, and now I’m all set, don’t have to do that job again for a while. We had extended afternoon coffee without an interruption, then pizza dinner and Westworld. Though my legs are a little achy from the walk I am starting to feel very good mentally about not having to do any shopping for a bit.

I know some folks don’t do well with the staying at home and only exercising near home. I tend to enjoy staying at home for the most part even in non-COVID times but I also really used to enjoy shopping trips.. but now, with my germophobia ramping up anytime I get near a supermarket or post office or shop of any kind.. stocking up week is where I don’t do well mentally.

Sunday –

I got two packages this morning. Finally some stock arrived. It wasn’t as much stock as I hoped it would be. The rest of the day I pretty much rested, I needed a good day off BUT I did get one of my goals done YAY.. :) This is my much reduced finally cleaned bookcase – all the books I had in digital format got donated to charity last year.

Leftover pizza for dinner. Also, ordered some bracelets online. ;)

Random Thoughts –

I’m thinking we should go to get tested for COVID – not that I think we have it but we have both had an ongoing ear nose and throat thing for about 4 weeks now and they are encouraging people with specific symptoms to get tested. My only symptom is the sore throat. We’ll ponder this concept over the next few days and make a decision on it.

I do have to take a friend to the shop tomorrow morning. She touches nothing. I touch the things. She points at what she wants, I put it in the cart. That is how that is going to go. She is high risk but needs meat.

Catch up with these other folks blogging about our new normal. :)

Moving With Mitchell
Dkzody’s Weblog
High Riser
Stargazer
Dawn
Sean at Assholes Watching Movies
Zazzy
EssexHebridean
SilverTiger
Joanne @ Cup On The Bus
gigihawaii
anexactinglife

Should your blog be listed here? Leave me a comment and it will be next time. :)

These arrived on Monday. With all the extra handwashing hand cream is a thing I’m using a lot of at the moment and a friend was having a virtual Le Reve party on Zoom. The mango lime is my favourite flavour thus far.

I couldn’t even remember how long it has been since all this started now so I went back and checked. March 20th was my first COVID post here.. That means today we are coming up on 4 weeks since we stocked up. So it is time to stock up again this week.

I began to think it might be time last weekend because when we were making pizza, we discovered we had run out of shredded cheese! Luckily I’d bought some gluten free mozzarella plus tasty block cheese for our FEBRUARY pizza night which had been saved in ziploc bags waiting for the next pizza night which of course never happened. That was still ok so we were able to grate that and use it on the pizza.

Monday –

I had to post a package and that place is right around the corner from the bulk cash and carry so right before I left, I checked in with my parents to see if they needed anything. Milk and eggs was the request, both of which the cash and carry has.

Seeing as I was there I stocked up on a few things for us – fresh mince meat, chicken breast was on special so I got those things for both households, I got us a chicken to roast, milk and eggs, some mozzarella cheese, and I got a Milklab almond milk for us (me) to try for coffee. I really wanted Macadamia milk but there wasn’t any – I would like to try that.

I’m usually a person with plenty of spare packet biscuits in the house but surprisingly we had run out of those too, so I grabbed some Melting Moments and some rice crackers.

I dropped those things off at the parents, then back here to roast my chicken slowly. Obvs, roast chicken dinner with potatoes.

Tuesday –

My day started off right with a delivery of doughnuts – this time we got lemon curd, nutella and vanilla bean. These are not all for me – I have distributed them in a socially distanced way to friends and family. I got 3 lemon curd doughnuts. I was only meant to have two but the parents decided they only wanted one of each flavour so there was a spare lemon curd. They are so delicious and not too sweet that is why I love the lemon curd ones. :)

Work & customers, setting up the delivery run for Wednesday, the parents dropped in to grab their doughnuts, a package arrived for me, afternoon coffee with a doughnut, savory mince for dinner then tried to resist eating my second doughnut.. I settled for sharing one with The Other Half for dessert.

Wednesday –

What a massive day we’ve had today. A delivery run down south so we can skip it this weekend, plus a big stock up grocery shopping for two households. It took us two hours to do the shopping across two stores. Our normal shopping takes 45 minutes to go to two stores.

The hope is that we can now stay here for at least the next week without having to go anywhere other than dropping packages at the Australia Post depot, though The Other Half does have to go to work next Tuesday. Our household is set for the next 3-4 weeks other than perhaps an occasional milk top up. The parents probably not so much, they have a smaller fridge so can’t keep as much fresh stuff as we can.

I’m completely exhausted and it is bedtime here. Hopefully on Sunday I can report getting some of the goals finished as I really want to get stuck into jobs and chores the next few days.

Catch up with these other folks blogging about our new normal. :)

Moving With Mitchell
Dkzody’s Weblog
High Riser
Stargazer
Dawn
Sean at Assholes Watching Movies
Zazzy
EssexHebridean
SilverTiger
Joanne @ Cup On The Bus
gigihawaii
anexactinglife

Should your blog be listed here? Leave me a comment and it will be next time. :)

I just walked down the hallway and looked into one of the rooms and there was Cuckoo Cat, like a statue on the shelf. An impressive yet tiny statue.

Thursday –

I got back to walking today. I did a 5km mostly made up of 100m back and forths in the one spot, on a local oval. It felt pretty nice to be out walking.

I’m going to make a point of marking out some me time in the coming days because I think it is important to get some exercise in, and because when I got back from my 5km walk, the business had not imploded upon itself. People patiently waited. I set an away from keyboard message and SHOCK HORROR actually deliberately left my phone at home.

Because I left my phone at home, the following exchange played in my head many times while I walked..

President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet : I walked to school every morning in weather colder than this.
Abbey Bartlet : From the headmaster’s house to your classroom.
President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet : That’s right, baby. Just a camel hair coat, leather gloves, a varsity scarf, and these wits.

I did not have a camel hair coat, leather gloves, a scarf of any kind, but I take the wits of President Bartlet wherever I go.

You will recall my friend Lizzy, she of the Fascinatory story. On Wednesday she got a fever and sweats. On Thursday her doctor sent her to be tested for COVID. It is now Sunday night and she still does not have the results. You better believe she is taking all of this a lot more seriously now. I am very hopeful it will turn out to be fine.

The rest of Thursday passed in a busy blur of making packages, posting packages, putting stuff aside for customers, and I cannot recall what we had for dinner.

Friday –

This time for my morning walk I called a friend to go with me. She is actually my hairdresser. She is trying to move house in the midst of all of this. We did another 5km and walked to one house she had on her list which is not very far from my house.

Weirdly while we were out, she mentioned she had a craving for a Calippo ice block – and just the day before the other half had said to me “Are you ever going to eat these Calippo in the freezer?” – I had actually forgotten all about them. So when we got home we both had a Calippo.

Another busy work day this time I got in another pomodoro of sorting through the POS system and then sorted out the deliveries for the next day. We’ve decided we will go south one Saturday and north the next one – this one was north and we hadn’t been that way for a bit so we had 8 deliveries to do.

We also decided to make a stop at *gulp* IKEA. We needed more KALLAX shelving and now is a good time to install it, while the other half is technically on Uni holidays.

Dinner was bolognese sauce over mashed potato. One of my favourite meals of all time and I have gradually convinced The Other Half to share this opinion.

Saturday –

We were on our way on time for once, deliveries all went well. The IKEA part was.. well.. weird to say the least. First let me say we were both wearing fabric masks, and I had equipped us well with wipes for the trolley and hand sanitizer.

Being an IKEA nut like both myself and Sephyroth are, I know the store like the back of my hand and we had absolutely zero trouble skipping all the pathways and heading directly for the warehouse down a secret back alley almost nobody knows about to where our item was located, which happened to be right next to where the trolleys usually are.

When we got there, zero trolleys. So we had to go looking for one. When we did find one, of course we wiped it down and raced back to where the Kallax live. The thing that took the most time was waiting for a checkout. Everyone was social distancing like they’d been doing it all their lives and surprisingly many many people had decided to ignore the idiotic advice of our Deputy Chief Medical Officer and wear masks.

We were in and out of there in 30 minutes – 20 minutes of which was waiting at the checkout. Then we strapped the Kallax to the roof racks and drove home. Pizza for dinner.

Sunday –

I managed to take most of today off. It was sheer bliss. First a 6km walk with my hairdresser friend, home to a Calippo again, then after a shower I made my own washing powder, The Other Half built the Kallax, I plonked myself in my chair and binge watched season 6 of Bosch. There were a few interruptions and I did put together a few orders for shipping tomorrow but otherwise I got to rest, recharge, relax, and refresh ready for a new week. I really needed that today.

It seems like Cuckoo needed that too, she spent a lot of the afternoon posing cutely on my lap.

Leftover pizza and two episodes of Westworld, writing this post, a small icecream then it is bedtime. I hope you are all well!

Catch up with these other folks blogging about our new normal. :)

Moving With Mitchell
Dkzody’s Weblog
High Riser
Stargazer
Dawn
Sean at Assholes Watching Movies
Zazzy
EssexHebridean
SilverTiger
Joanne @ Cup On The Bus
gigihawaii
anexactinglife

Should your blog be listed here? Leave me a comment and it will be next time. :)

Is the bizarre statements some people I know are making. Let me give you one example. I will not name names, I will make up names to be on the safe side, though I do not think they are readers of my blog. Lets go with Jane Austen names!

My friend Elizabeth (known as Lizzy) is someone over 60 with underlying health conditions. Her doctor has told her to go nowhere. Yet she keeps going to the shops all the time, and then saying things like “There were so many people there, I can’t believe it!”

This has happened a few times and I’ve kept my mouth shut about it, until the last time on Monday when I blurted out “You were one of them!” in reply to this comment.

Then the story changed “There was nobody there” – wait a minute, just a minute ago there were so many, now there’s none? I said in reply to this “It doesn’t matter how many people were there. It matters whether some of those people coughed all over an item you’ve just bought and taken home to your house. It matters if one of them left germs all over the eftpos keypad.”

She was a bit taken aback when she really thought about what I said. Then I said – “your doctor has told you to go nowhere. You shouldn’t be going to the shops. I’ve told you if you need something I will go for you, and you have family who can do that as well. Plus you can get things delivered, you are eligible to have home delivery from either of the supermarkets. But you’ve got to stop going.. ”

The next morning she had offered to pop around and keep an eye out for the courier while I ran to the post office. I was due a couple of packages. When she got here, she told me she had a sore throat and wouldn’t come inside just in case. I gave her some of my awesome Difflam throat lozenges and she stayed in her car in the driveway while I ran to the post office.

I really hope she listens to me about this. But she’s not the only one doing this kind of thing. We had to go to Bunnings today and by had, I mean we really needed some stuff in order to do things we need to do for the business. I stayed in the car while the other half ran in with his mask on.

The amount of people there! The many, many clearly elderly people there! I have never seen Bunnings so packed on a Wednesday. Normally on a Wednesday you could have your pick of parks, the carpark was nearly full.

Is it that people need to tell themselves one thing “I’m not going anywhere but I actually went here, there, and yonder” so they will believe they are safe from this? Is it because they are bored and need to entertain themselves? WTF is going on with this?

I’m confident enough in my germophobia that I think I take the right precautions but even I recognise that might not be enough and going anywhere is a risky business but especially to the shops, therefore I am trying to limit the amount of times I go to the shops. If I can do home delivery I will.

It really has only been two days since I posted but we’ve got a schedule so I will stick to it!

Tuesday – early morning run to the Post Office to post off 8 packages. That is the most I ever did in one hit. The post office guy seemed a little out of countenance and asked me if I had a business account. I did but never had the need to use it before, and I didn’t have the time or energy to work out the online system over Easter.

But once I got home two more postal orders came in and I gave it a try. It is super easy! I’m doing future posting online now instead and taking it direct to the local distribution centre – less people there anyway, easy to park, it is drop off and they scan it. I print my own labels at home.

One of the things that has annoyed me about posting for a while – they put a postage sticker on which shows one price but to add tracking or signature required or send a registered letter is an extra cost and nowhere do they put that extra cost on the label. This way there is no price on the label. And it looks far more professional too.

Was a less busy day for me thankfully but I had to keep running out to the mancave to print our trays. It is one every 18 minutes, so I set a clock timer and run out to take the printed tray out and put in a new piece of wood.

The other half went to work and he had a lovely chilled out day. Everyone else is working from home, he is the only one there. He can play his music. Also parking is a lot easier now.

Dinner was fish burgers on brioche buns. Yummy, kind of like a home made filet o’ fish and far far cheaper than a filet o’ fish. You seen the price of those babies lately? I think it is over $6 now. Insane!

Wednesday – up super early in the hope that packages would arrive today. Nothing on the app. Nothing arrived – sometimes he just rocks up and the app has not updated yet. Out to the mancave to print, glue and spray the trays I printed yesterday, then check everything off for deliveries we were doing today.

The app updated at 9:19am to say package on board. Well now we can’t go and do deliveries because what if it comes while we’re not here? We decide to wait until 10am and then head off, I will watch the cameras as we go. This is the first day I have felt angry about the postal situation. This package on board today was in Sydney on Friday April 3rd. WTF was it doing for over a week?

The first delivery we need to do is only about 15 minutes drive away. Part way there The Other Half has a great idea and something we’ve been meaning to do for a while – lets get a Ring doorbell. That way we can tell the driver to take the package around the back if we’re not here. A very quick dash to Bunnings, and a quick trip home to install it, and we’re back on our way. No sign of the package yet though.

This is great. We will never miss another doorbell ring again – it calls to your phone and you can also set it to record any movement within a certain area, it will take a photo and send it to you. You can dial in and watch it live too.

We had to drive through some areas which experienced the bushfires on our way to Ulladulla. I find this very hard. Even though the trees have started to sprout new growth, it is the memory of the collective trauma we all went through. There are huge sections of burned out trees, and the enormity of it.. some sections you can see it was far hotter than in others and in those areas a lot of the trees are not recovering at all. They will not return.

I was expecting todays package to be quite a big one. I was wrong. It was so small the postie had it on board. She left it on the doorstep. We’ve talked about this before. :( I had to call Dad and ask him to drop around and grab it.

We had to get milk on the way home, so while talking to them I asked did they need anything.. he said yes, Eskimo Pies. Apparently Dad claims that my mother is using these as one of her major food groups at the moment. Mother begs to differ. I think the mystery of who is actually eating the Eskimo Pies will not be solved without video evidence.

We had two deliveries at Ulladulla and then we stopped in at Hayden’s pies to replace our pie inventory. There was only one left in the freezer. I got the parents some Salted Caramel Cheesecake and some for us as well. I noticed the bakery zombies appear unable to follow social distancing rules, they just walk right up to the cabinet regardless.

We grabbed a couple of pies to eat for a late lunch, so late neither of us felt like dinner. We just had a (cut in half) slice of cheesecake each about 8:30pm and it was delicious.

Dropped the Eskimo Pies to the parents, picked up my package, returned home. Had a nice chilled out evening.

I’m really going to try and take it easy the next couple of days. We have a delivery run on Saturday and we may attempt a click and collect at IKEA on the way through to get some organising shelves.

I hope you are all doing well! No goal update today because the answer is zip, zilch, nada.

Catch up with these other folks blogging about our new normal. :)

Moving With Mitchell
Dkzody’s Weblog
High Riser
Stargazer
Dawn
Sean at Assholes Watching Movies
Zazzy
EssexHebridean
SilverTiger
Joanne @ Cup On The Bus
gigihawaii
anexactinglife

Should your blog be listed here? Leave me a comment and it will be next time. :)