This weekend was meant to be a frenzy of painting activity, given that we're hosting christmas day for 12 people in a dining room which is mid-renovation. Note my use of the past tense and the words "meant to be". As you can probably tell, things didn't go exactly to plan.
We started off the weekend in relaxed manner, going over to friends for christmas drinks on Friday night. That lasted until around 10pm in the end. I know Rob & Lesley relatively well. Their son Noah is one of Henry's best friends and when Rob & Lesley are on song, they're good company. Some of their friends were there too, including a guy who I played football with last season. They were all funny and interesting which is one of the reasons we stayed as late as we did. Suffice to say, no painting got done when we got home at 10pm.
On Saturday, we ferried Henry to cricket and then Vanessa & I went to Kotara. Vanessa had a hair appointment with the stylist we share/fight over ownership of - a girl called Lauren who I (yes Vanessa, it was me) discovered when she was an apprentice at Ann's Hair Lounge in Mayfield. Anyway, she did a fantastic job on Vanessa's hair and it looks absolutely fantastic. Vanessa's very happy with it. Whilst Vanessa was being styled, I managed to pick up the final christmas present I wanted to get for her, so it was a very fruitful trip for the two of us.
We got home around 2pm on Saturday and began to prepare for the party we were throwing that night. Nothing massive - just 5-6 people over for christmas drinks and nibblies. I ended up making pizzas on lebanese flatbread and that combined with the chicken, cheese and crackers we bought (plus the stuff our guests also brought) fed us very well. We sat out around the garden table under the grapevine with solar lights twinkling and candles burning until around 11pm in the end. By the time everyone went home, all we had time to do was load the dishwasher and go to bed.
So arrived Sunday - the day of deco-reckoning you'd have thought. Our chance to get stuck in, get the first coat well and truly on the walls and maybe measure up for, buy and stain the quad. Again I find myself talking about the potential to have done it, rather than the actual process that was involved in actually doing it. Let's just say that we haven't done the garden in around a month and the weather was blisteringly hot. You do the maths.
We'd had someone come round on Friday to cut the grass for us, as we honestly didn't think we'd have time to do it ourselves. They did half a job really. What they did, they did okay but there were areas they missed and areas where they could have done better. That meant that Vanessa & I found ourselves in the back yard pretty much all of Sunday. You know how it is - you mow, whippersnip and then you find yourself thinking 'that bush needs hacking back'. Before you know it, there's a four foot high pile of cuttings behind you and you're looking at the grapevine thinking "now I'll just give that a quick prune"....
By 3pm we'd worked ourselves into a sweaty and near-dead state. That was when Vanessa suggested we borrow Bill's ute and go to get the sand for our pool. In case you don't know, we picked up an above-ground pool earlier this year. It's been sitting in our garage these past months and now that we've got the pool fence up and the weather's hot, there's no reason not to put the pool up. Well, no reason other than the fact that we should be decorating. Oh; and we're dead on our feet. But apart from having other things to do and being absolutely fucked from a day's gardening in temperatures of 30 degrees, what's stopping us? Evidently nothing.
We went and bought a ute tray-load of sand, shovelled it into a wheelbarrow and wheeled it to the pool site at the very back of our yard (probably around 20 trips but Henry & I took it in turns, thank god). Then we spread it out, levelled it as best we could be bothered and then set about erecting the pool. It's rather large - so large that we dug up a shrub and a bush to make room for it. Anyway, it's up. It needs cleaning before it can be filled with water, but the hardest part's done. I even managed to replant the two things we'd dug up. I'd hate plants to have to die just because we changed our yard around.
Our home PC's still disconnected but this is the pool we have up.
As much as I want the dining room sorted out for christmas day, I have to accept that it might not be finished until after christmas. We can still have dinner there and it will get done before too long. I guess we just ran into other things that needed doing. It's easy for me to forget, but it's only 3 days until christmas now. I've decided to just let things happen, accept it and work on enjoying the time of year. I'd hate to be stressed out and fail to enjoy the period just because planned painting didn't finish on time. So - finished dining room or unfinished dining room, I'm going to flick into Christmas mode and enjoy the break. I think I've earned the right - not to mention a dip in our new pool.
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